I feel the same way about the beautiful old buildings I enjoy(restore, replicate features of, etc). I think they(old and ancient buildings), and the whaling boat should be preserved. And they will occasionally be built again to exact records that are also archived and cherished, but not on a large scale. Building design has moved on.

And unlike many architectural designs that say little more than 'big ego' of the designer today, I see the B50 as being designed by speed. I'm no NA but it's evident to me that the shape of the B50 hull is what is relatively new in racing boat design. You can't get that speed a in monohull shape like a B40. And as this new speed potential has formed this hull, how could a designer make it look like a beautiful CCA hull without looking like a caricature of a sailboat? What design element of that whale boat would you add?

Again I don't know NA but I suspect the sheer has to go along with the dish pan hull shape. Imagining much sheer on that wide hull looks funky in my eye. Envisioning long overhangs on the saucer shape doesn't look right, either.

I love the traditional boat design elements that are still evident on many new designs today(the type I post). But on the racing/speed side, I think we've turned the page.

Speed has always driven sailboat design, right(even a B40 was a racing design in it's day)? Some of the new idea in speed-hull shape, isn't that new. Didn't the old sandbagger hulls have similarities to the current racers? Looking back though, the sandbaggers didn't 'pan out' (sorry...). They were restricted to inland inshore racing. Will that be the fate of the new racing designs? Could be.

But for now, the new triangle shaped racing hulls are out there crossing oceans, everyday it seems. They're not pretty to my eye-at all. But like a skyscraper, I can't deny the function. And in all design that endures, form follows,...