R Speculation

All fair points. The RS100 is a demanding boat and became a little more so between prototype and production. 

Its a difficult challenge between aspiration and reality when people design these boats. We may all aspire to sail a 49er in 25 knots, but very very few can. The manufacturers can always up the horsepower to excite people, but ultimately it has a short selling life. The nice thing about both the new boats is that they don't appear to have been overdone.

Looks are subjective and even after 6 years the punk looks very striking, some of the extremeness in the bow has been reduced on the Zero, which (no offence Dan) makes it look even better. It has the sort of effect that the 300 did on launch - you just looked at it because it was very different to everything else around and thought woah. 

The aero on the other hand does have the RS look to it that we all know and there are flat sections such as the long foredeck, but I think that, plus a decent helping of carbon, is how they can build it that stiff at that weight. I thought it looked good 'in the flesh' at the show, but it is more conventional looking than the Dzero. Of course the D-one has had more than a couple of negative iGRF comments about its 'looks', but it looks pretty good on the water and wouldn't stop me buying one because it does the job of being a fast sailing dinghy very well.

Of course we should remember that as humans (most of us anyway) are pre-programmed to like curves(!)

As for seeing an aero or Zero startling against a similarly well sailed Laser,  both boats will of course be better and faster and that is a fact. That doesn't mean that either will ever sell a 10th of the volume of Laser or indeed out last it, but they certainly should.