Courses for Open Meetings

When I've attended 3k opens and been presented exclusively with windward-leeward courses, I've been bored witless by the end of a weekend.  I've not been alone in wishing there had been some challenging kite reaches - laying a mark with the kite up is after all a skill that's important in everyday sailing but largely untested on ww-lw.

Even worse in a 2k, where you need to head up with that little kite to get any exciting blasting, and yet they trudge eternally up and down ww-lw courses, mostly soaking the runs. Tedious sailing even if pundits would argue that the racing is more tactical.  A limited set of tactics, however.

Again, in the Wayfarer, we've attended lovely venues like Poole and Falmouth that are just crying out for geographical courses that test your ability to interpret the topology and tides. But what do we get? Eternal triangles just like the last open and the one before that.  It's like they try to convert every venue into Grafham.  A reason given is that they want to avoid locals having an advantage, but in my experience that is a very over-rated commodity - it is rarely the locals who come out on top; often they are blinkered (self included) by what 'it's usually like'.

What prompted this thread was sight of this:

Locals sailing out of Lymington.  When we had a Nats there (at the other club), we missed out on the great sailing in the river and were obliged to sail forever to get to and from some very indifferent sausage triangles out in the Solent miles from any shore references (nice bits).

So what I'd like to establish is, am I the only person who when they visit other venues would like to sail the courses that the locals normally sail?.  My reasoning is that they will have evolved the best courses for their local environment, and when I go there I want to have best sail on offer.  If that involves complex navigation like inside Poole Harbour, great - it is something new and invariably not impossible to pick up fairly quickly.  If it involves occasionally losing out to the local hot shot because he knows of a back-eddy, fine, a small price to pay for an interesting sail and something learned. Moreover, one reason for travelling is, for me, a desire to experience something different to what I normally do; I don't get that if i'm stuck in the middle of nowhere in particular traipsing round the usual laps.

Right, got that of my chest.  Please vote away.