My recollection is that originally there was no National Class crew weight limit, and some boats were sailing with 1100 pounds. After our first year in Detroit when a boatload of heavyweights ran away with the season championship, our fleet adopted a 750 pound limit. Later, with Carl Schumacher's support the National Class adopted the 880 pound limit which is the same as the J24 Class weight limit. I don't believe it's accurate to say that Carl designed the boat for a 1000 pound crew weight. His intent was to design a light boat that could be powered with small sails and sailed with a four or five person crew including women and children.

In my opinion, a better way to go would be to drop the 150 % genoa and allow instead two non-overlapping headsails--One small #3 for heavy air and another more powerful, but non-overlapping jib for light air. This would make the boat much more fun to sail. There's nothing I enjoy less about the boat than sailing it above 12 knots with the #1. Nearly all of the newer, popular classes and designs have fractional rigs and non-overlapping jibs.

:: I will weight in here for a bit (pun intended). I am in
:: favor of a change in crew weight limit up to 1000 lbs.
:: as that was the original crew weight Carl designed the
:: boat to carry. Not being a mathematician I will not
:: attempt to argue numbers except to say that the
:: difference of 100 lbs. that Mike speaks of does not seem
:: to me to be such an additional stress on the boat, but a
:: lot less stress on the skipper to put a crew together
:: consistently. I am still having a very difficult time
:: picking up the diehard logic of the crew weight needing
:: to be 880 lbs. I have never seen nor heard any logic for
:: that particular number. It seems to me that Mike's
:: number of 980 lbs. is at best reasonable and at least
:: based upon some use of arithmetic. I second Mike's
:: motion to change the crew weight to 980 lbs.
::
:: Does this motion have any standing, anyway. If so, let's
:: vote on it.