iand,
Im just moving the subject back to the thread of class5 and your interest in building one. If you want to get the best performance from a class5 (or any other race class) you actually need other yachts to compete against.
Ideally club racing is great for this.
Many years ago prior going to the UK championships Bill Finch did a lot of one on one yacht testing with me sailing the second yacht, both yachts were of similar speed and he would then change things on yacht 1 untill it was significantly faster than an unchanged yacht 2. Then the changes were made to the second yacht to then match 1, the process then stated again with the next item for improvement... and yes this took many hours.
If you were to sail in isolation (without yachts in the same class) or change things at the same time as another yacht you will never find out if what you did actually works or not.

Gizmo said...

iand,

If you were to sail in isolation (without yachts in the same class) or change things at the same time as another yacht you will never find out if what you did actually works or not.

And that why the GPS is such a beautiful invention you can almost use it as your second yacht