That new wooden Merlin

The thing I found with my NS mast is that when you have the mast an sail tuned properly it is very fast, but when it is wrong it is very slow.  This is because the boat has very small sails and relies on the efficiency of the mast to get the same performance as a boat with normal size sails. If you lose the efficiency through bad trim, you go as slow as a boat with very small sails.  Also, as soon as the wind is far enough behind that you are sailing on drag rather than lift, you are slow again due to lack of sail area.

If you get it right though they are very fast.  You can get more lift and less drag, which equate to higher speed and closer pointing.  Close reaching is the NS14s real forte.  I firmly believe that you can get as good gust response with a wing mast, but done differently. 

In fact, because the mast is much stiffer in one axis than the other (talking NS style wing, not Tasar style), the amount of rotation effects the amount of sideways bend, in some ways you have more control over gust response - after all, when reaching you don't really want a gust responsive mast.

But when you can pick your sail area, it is makes sense to put bigger sails on a (nice) stick than develop a complex wing.

I think some fairly serious thoughtand effort has been thrown at wing masts for Merlins in the not so distant past? Not successfully. Not sure they all been pear shaped either?

At the end of the day, it's a highly developed boat that delivers close racing. That's what it's for, fleet racing, over a variety of conditions. and it does it very well. A class that delivers such good (quality and quantity) fleets at opens and championships will be a tough place to prove anything radical, unless it really is a better all round solution. You'd think extra 'free' sail (wing) area was a dead cert, but unless it's as controllable up to F6 and has no more weight aloft, there are down sides.

The Aus classes with wing masts don't seem to catch on here in the UK, not sure why. Possibly it's the no kite thing, which may only be marketable for 'simple' boats here, i.e. not too many rig controls, with the strange exception of the N12.

Perhaps when the Merlins and RS400's get blown away by wingmast boats at the major pursuit/handicap races over a range of weather, we'll be convinced.

To stumble back in the general direction of the OP, how much is a new Merlin?

both wood and plastic?