I really do not have a reason to choose one side or the other in this discussion. To me it seems that the "wing is too expensive" stuff just does not sound convincing for a "development" class.
Whether or not the wing is in - and that's something I'm not even really considering - EVERY development class regularly has to ban things.
The Moth has already banned sliding seats, catamaran and trimaran configurations, windsurfer rigs, wing-borne foils, sloop rigs and many other things.
Any class HAS to do these to preserve itself. Go back a few years, before the foilers came out, and the boards were normally quicker and almost certainly would have been quicker even if cut down to Moth LOA. So if people had followed the "we can't ban it" mantra years ago, the Mothies would have had to change to windsurfers or get beaten.
The Mothies made the choice, well BEFORE boards were faster, to ban windsurfer types. If they had not, they would almost certainly have become just another board class - and boards did not invent course-racing foilers or course-racing wing rigs.
So it was only because Moths had earlier banned windsurfers that they can still create innovations like foiling and small wing sails.
Ironically, the same sort of thing happened in windsurfers. IT was only when they banned hulls over a certain depth and introduced other restrictions that the Raceboard type could evolve. It was only when they banned centreboards and imposed a length and wind limit that the Formula boards could evolve.
After all, if we had no rules we'd all be sailing kites or maxi multis - it's the rules that create the competition.
I once was one of the four guys who created a national class with three rules (including a rule restricting crews to one, and another saying that the gear could include nothing that would hurt other competitors). It may have been effectively the most open class in the history of sailing.
. It died, just like all classes that have almost no restrictions die. I'm currently arguing for a reduction in restrictions in the International development class for which I'm on the committee, but you have to have some rules or it simply doesn't work.
The 18s ban things. The A Class ban things. The Moths ban things. The 12s ban things. The Rs ban things. The C Class bans things. The maxi multis and ORMA 60s ban things. Canoes ban things. All classes that exist ban things, and almost all of the time cost is a major reason.
The idea of banning things in development classes for cost and obsolescence reasons seems much more acceptable in the UK and Australia than in other areas. And where are most of the development classes? In just those two places where restrictions are accepted. Other areas do the talking but don't do the building.
This is NOT saying that wings should be banned, but the idea that development classes can't ban things is the thinking that may have killed the once-thriving East Coast USA development class culture. You can't run a class unless you consider restrictions.
People are running around saying that the current developments have revitalised the Moths in the USA (although numbers are still tiny) but the other side of the coin is that it was earlier developments that killed the Moth class in the USA decades ago. It is now only a fraction of its former size. If you used a flamethrower to burn every living thing on your garden, and 40 years later some green shoots started to sprout, you wouldn't use that as evidence that the flamethrower was the perfect gardening tool. That's not saying that restrictions are good, per se, but when lack of restrictions has killed the class previously in an area then you can't use a small-scale revival as much evidence that unrestricted development is good for the class.
Whether or not the wings should be banned, the point is that restrictions are not bad, per se, even in a development class because they are necessary to keep such classes alive.
