Both the initial race report and the latest Spring 2015 Newsprint article contain explanations as to why the Sprint 15 had been moved by FF de Voile from C4 to C3. Both state it is because FF de Voile had ruled that boats over 4.8 metres would be classed in C3.
Taking measurements at the crudest level, the Sprint 15 is 15 feet long. At 0.3048 metres to an imperial foot, this makes the Sprint 15 4.572 metres long, less than 4.8 metres like the Hobie 14 which remained in class C4. Clearly there is something awry!
So I looked at the FF de Voile website and found http://www.ffvoile.fr/ffv/web/pratique/ ... amaran.asp. Inspection of the data shown for the various Dart Sprint 15 categories shows AL (?hull length overall?) of 4.53 and WL (?hull waterline length?) of 4.25!
So I looked for the longest cat shown as being in Groupe 4 (third column of table) and found it to be the Hobie Twixxy with AL=4.38 (no figure given for WL).
I also looked through the shorter cats shown as being in Groupe 3 and found 2 WETA cats with AL=4.37 (WL=4.37 also)!
The magazine report mentions a meeting between Brian Phipps and Paul Craft and a representative of FF de Voile. Perhaps Brian or Paul can provide the reason which escapes me - is it as simple as the dividing line on length being 4.38 metres rather than the 4.8 metres stated in both Sprint 15 reports?
Sorry to be so very nerdish!
