Alto - Why?

That upwind sail plan looks pretty big - I hope you have a BIG crew ... 100kg plus.

.......no, it's about having a kite thats versatile.

after spending quite a while getting the hang of it (it was a struggle), we now appreciate the benefits. I am fortunate in that I've got the same crew for life. Most helms get through crew at an alarming rate (usually because they shout at them) so they never have time to get to grips with a symmetric. The assy wins on that basis.

 I wish you luck with the new boat, it looks pretty good. I await with interest future progress reports

I think it will struggle, too, not because it is a bad boat (i have no clue either way) but because marketing muscle sells boats these days.

Personally, I think the bowsprit is a great idea for confined waters and tricky bits. Very few of the asymmetric boats can even beat our Firefly down a short dead run on a small lake unless it is very windy, as the distance sailed is just too great compared to the gains. Whether it can be better than a well used conventional kite (like say on a 470...) on the sea, I'm sure GRF will let us know in his own inimitable way later in the season...

Hmmm, not convinced I'm afraid.  I can see that it does have a market and in many ways it's nicer to see an existing hull being developed than yet another brand new design coming out, but to me it just seems that it will have a very short future and I have questions about the hull development.  I say "short future" because if it was really much good then in 50 years of 5o5 development and 20 years of asymmetric sailing you would have though someone would have had that "lightbulb moment" and combined the two.  And I say "tight budget" because from a marketing perspective it looks to have had a pretty serious redesign and I think it may have been better to keep it under wraps or keeping it un-named.  To sail it round as a slightly modded 5o5 for a few years under the Alto name and then for the thing to come back out with a different transom, chines, stem etc would worry me...what else is planned in these days of one designs changing so much? (49er rig/hull, RS800 deck, Mirror rig, Laser controls, Graduate sailplan to name but a few, including of course 5o5 kites!)

I'm most definitely no pre-pubescent but I do sail a boat with a red heart on the sail (when I finish building it) but also a Fireball, and they did try the whole asymm thing on a ball, and it was quicker, but it just flopped, and that boat was converted back...

But most of all I want to go up to an Alto and say "you poor, poor thing, you could have been a proper 5o5 with a flyaway pole and an monster kite..."

I'm not knocking it too much and I wish you the best of luck and TBH reading previous posts I think it will probably be a great boat for your requirements, however I don't really get the design breif of "take a 5o5 hull, put a bigger kite on it and design it so it can go dead downwind too and hope the class takes off", it's the same as "take a used 505 with the big kite on which already goes dead downwind beautifully and sails similar courses to asymms, spend a day learning to gybe it with it's very efficient flyaway pole system, join a class with over 50 years of heritage, and probably get you money back when you sell it..."