Foiling for the masses

If you (not targeted at you Bob) want to foil, put the work in, endure the learning curve and gain the reward at the end of the day.  If you want to be competitive in other athletic sports you go to the gym to raise your game, why does sailing have to be any different? 

Since we can't expect many manufacturers to lose about 5,000 GBP per boat over about 400 units (if my memory of vague back-of-the-envelope guesses is right) we also can't expect that sort of launch for many other new craft.  Having someone take that sort of financial loss (and much of the loss was felt by their contractors and suppliers as far as I know) to support a class means it's in a very special category when it comes to artificially low prices and artificially high levels of promotion - until the cash runs out.

Interestingly, the real "breakthrough" mass-market boats of earlier generations (Laser, Windsurfer, J/24, Hobie... huge in most of the sailing world if not always in the UK) all came from bargain-basement operations.  The Hobie seemed to be the best-funded one, with funds of about 80,000 pounds in today's values.  The Laser is the boat it is because of the funding it DIDN'T have, which forced the trio who built it to abandon plans to compete with the Sunfish.  With the ease of modern marketing on the net, perhaps it could be even easier to launch a product now, if it really did grab the mass market's imagination at the right price - which IMHO foilers don't seem to do.