Is inflation impacting Nationals Attendance?

We know the boom is over, but we can still learn lessons from it.

Am only quoting mrs Grumpycat as she has done both SUP and kayaking . Her view is SUPing is more of a all body work out. 

The problem with it is 99.9% of people taking it up have no previous experience of water sports so have no idea of dangers of water in all its forms . 

Mrs G gave up going on paddleboard fb pages because of a number reasons . 

1) Some people think they can just turn up at every bit of open water and sup ( it’s their RIGHT you know ) 

2) People who say ALL boards are the same ( that board they bought online for £150 is constructed the same as a £700 Red board )

3) Some people think wearing a wetsuit and or buoyancy aid is just unnecessary. ( the ankle strap to the board is all they need you know ) 

4)  People who think a waist buoyancy aid is a good idea. ( They are kept in a bum bag and if you fall into the water , you have to unzip the bag , put the buoyancy aid over your head and then inflated it.) 

As Mrs G put it , there is only so much time you can spend trying to persuade people not to kill themselves. 

Not surprised to hear the boom in paddle boarding has topped out. 

But I bet in every canoe club they are talking, like dinghy sailors,  about why these people didn’t do their sport at their club. 

The answer is simple it’s a athletic pastime not a competitive sport . With a pastime , you need very little infrastructure or rules ( to be honest most supists don’t even known they need a licence to sup on most  canals and rivers ) while sports need infrastructure , rules and people to organise races and training. 

So I’m not to sure what lessons we can take from then other than try and make our clubs as outgoing and friendly as we can . 

As posted above,   accessibly is key . 

The biggest lesson IMHO would be that thinking things are "dull" leads people to make bad choices about the direction of a sport. It may look dull to us, but the boats you love look dull as stale dishwasher to many who prefer 12 Foot Skiffs or foilers. Writing something off as "dull" means ignoring the joys that the activity is giving people, and therefore what motivates people to take up a sport.

Apart from the main lesson of respecting people instead of implicitly insulting them, the lessons seem to include that people want to get on the water with simplicity rather than with complicated high-speed gear; that they want stuff that works in lots of locations rather than just the rare spots with ideal conditions; that most people have a lot happening in their lives and want relaxation in their available time, rather than complication; and to listen to the public instead of the industry trying to tell them what they should buy.

Probably all of us who got into windsurfing early on used to SUP, because we'd end up standing on our boards and paddling around when teaching or using the board as a boat tender or something. We didn't think it was fun, so it's weird to find that it's become a thing. But even people I know like top-line speedsailing windsurfers have got seriously into SUPping for things like chilling or fitness, while other people get into it to connect with nature. We sailors have gotten so much into tech, or slinging insults at boats that aren't tech, that we are ignoring much of the beauty and joy of what we do. SUPping seems to be promoting all those great things that sailing ignores. I haven't dived deeply into it, but the SUP promotions and forums seems to be much more about positivity towards the sport and tech than we have in sailing these days.

The arrival of stuff like windfoilers and kitefoilers could underline that if going quick in breeze and open water under sail is the point then even skiffs and Moths are outmoded, so perhaps the logical outcome for dinghies is to emphasise the things that foiling boards don't do, like performing well in enclosed waters, being versatile, and giving a different sensation rather than just being super quick in ideal conditions.

Foiling windsurfers are, in many ways, more convenient and versatile than older shortboards; they work much better in lighter winds. They actually have a lower top speed than non-foilers.

Funnily enough I'm just listening to an interview with windsurfing legend Robby Naish who mentioning that windsurfing continues to shrink, with the whole sport selling less than 100,000 boards per year worldwide. He's also saying that even in the high-performance windsurfing era, he had a lower profile in Hawaii than he has since got through SUPping. Considering that windsurfing shrank when it went "high performance" in the belief that it would get more publicity and popularity as a result, the fact that SUPs are higher profile even in Hawaii is a classic lesson in how going extreme stiffs a sport, while going accessible grows it.