New Designs and New Builds in 2017 to watch

At the Phwelli nationals a father and son turned up with an 800 having just completed their RYA L2. While they were unusual to go for that boat as their first it does highlight that the 800 is reasonably docile.
The Spice is a far trickier boat to sail than the 800 in part due to being shorter.
I was given the loan of Wet and Windy's demo SPICE back in 1999 for the Topper Eurocup in Carnac but unfortunately there weren't enough Spices entered to run them. Only the ISOs Buzz's and Boss's got to play.

Never sailed one but the 800 does look a daunting prospect for an inexperienced team. I suppose few helms or crews would buy one without a fair bit of either single wire or big assy experience.

You are a funny bunch. Optimist 1947 chine. Sunfish 1953 chine.
Chines can facilitate or enable construction from sheet materials. All things being equal a chine hull will offer more stability, but substantially more drag when immersed if doing sub planing speed or 12kts for a 14ft boat. Above 12kts they start to reduce drag if placed correctly.
Aero is basically geometrically similar to phantom (2 plank design) and lesser extent streaker and go slow (more "sophisticated 3 plank design) in order to facilitate construction from unscored foam, giving a low panel weight at the expense of some roundness where you want it for wsa reasons fwd, or ergonomics on cockpit. You can get some compounding into corecell with heat and or pressure. Even plywood if ever with how you stitch it and tOrture it.
Perhaps the interesting bit is reconciling classical compound double curvature shapes (need to be. Moulded or planked ) with chines to get the benefits of both worlds. No historian but suspect that began downunder some time around 1960.
My i14 has 2 chines both blending out in different places - one to form the kink at the rise of floor point midships like most 14s, the other to actually work hydrodynamically at over 12 kts, which eve in the 14 occurs only offwind really, so not the majority of time.

Originally posted by SimonW99 Sonny Levi's  innovation was more around surface drives not overall hull shape. Same could have been said about Fabio Buzzi. Highlights my point that innovation is the bits that go on and around hulls not the fundamental shapes.  Chines were probably more a result of materials and simple designs many years ago, then  rounded bilge was the way to go. The Aero and Pogo yachts show they have pros (stability and power) and of course cons. An interesting note is the Aero and DZero. - Designed around the same time, with the same end customer but different drivers. One round, one chined, both good in their own ways.

From where I sit there's been and continues to be an awful lot of interesting new design, and the best boats are very different shapes to what they were even 15 years ago. The IC worlds are in Wales this year, and there should be a good deal of interesting new ideas and concepts to study in the dinghy park.