Airborne 12ft skiff

12' skiffs are from Aus & New Zealand as are R-class skiffs.

If you want to upgrade from a 29er to a twin wire boat you should seriously consider a UK Cherub.  The rules have just been changed to increase white sails to 15.5m2 and kites to 21m2.  RMW are building off the shelf boats and will be on display at the Dinghy Show I believe.

Put it this way, No. (12 ft skiffs and R-class are development classes too by the way).

UK CHerubs the leading designs over the last 7 years have been the Paterson 7, the Slug and the Butt Plug.  These boats were all designed in 1997 / 8 or so. Prior to that the leading design was the Italian Bistro - again for about 7 years or so.

So if you get into the class with a second hand boat to learn to sail them, and then do a single upgrade to one of the newest designs then you will probably not have to upgrade for 5 to 8 years or so.

And if you are telling me you want to be competitive (top 5 at the nationals type stuff) in an OD class and would not upgrade anything on the boat over the same period I don't think I or anyone else would believe you...

So don't let the development bit put you off joining a great class.

The fast Cherubs tend to stay fast for a few years below is a table showing the top boats of the past 25 years in terms of nationals wins

Sail No   Name                Design            Wins Runner Up Appearances
2637     Norwegian Blue   Italian Bistro    5           ; 4                  11
2705     Flat Stanley        Mod. Murray    5           ; 3                  15
2660     Pasta Frenzy      Pasta Frenzy   4           ; 2                   9
2676     Shiny Beast        Paterson  7     4              1                   6

Both the Bistro and the Patterson 7 designs have managed to fill the top three places at a single nationals, the Bistro in 1991 and the P7 in 2004

The average number of nationals that a boat does is 3.88, Five boats have clocked up more than 10 nationals, 26 boats have managed five or more and 17 boats did not like the heat of competition and have only done the one!