Is inflation impacting Nationals Attendance?

Originally posted by CT249   Yep, accessibility is the key, and if we turn that key and look inside SUPping, surely learn a lot. There's actually a significant amount of SUP racing going on - the biggest SUP races get 700-1000 competitors. The toughest is 444 miles down Alaska's Yukon River. It's getting big enough for the international kayak association to end up in the Court of Arbitration for Sport to try to take over SUP racing, where it wound up looking very silly. But yes, most of the promotion and interest is just puttering around in accessible waterways and that's just one lesson for sailing. Another is the fact that people seem to want to have lessons to do something as simple as SUPpng. That seems weird to me, but that's my fault because I'm not seeing it from the novices' point of view. If people feel that SUPping is too complicated to learn easily, one can imagine how hard they think sailing must be. And the difficulty of an "insider" seeing out an "outsider" sees a sport is also illustrated by the fact that many of us can't see why you need basic lessons to SUP. It's a mystery to me why people would rather SUP than kayak, but perhaps kayaking is making itself seem too scary with the safety gear people now use?  Maybe it's the extra length of kayaks making them too cumbersome?  But more importantly, surely there's a lesson there? Almost certainly, we outside the SUP boom are missing out on a lot of other useful information that we could use to help grow sailing. In a similar way, it's baffling in some ways and disturbing in other ways that the success of the Windsurfer LT and the DF65 radio control boats are being largely ignored by the powers that be in our sport. For example, one of them has incredibly simple rig controls that cannot be adjusted while racing at all, yet it's attracting huge fleets including world champs from development classes. The other is a fairly leading-edge performance hull mass produced in cheap plastic and with no seams allowed in sails.  The powers that be should surely be doing proper analysis of such things when they make decisions about our sport. They claim to be our leaders so they should be doing a professional job of it.  PS - I may add that I have been, and am, heavily involved with growing the sport at various levels so I'm not sniping from the sidelines; rather I'm frustrated because I know from experience that we CAN grow our sport, but the powers that be are actively steering it in the wrong direction because they refuse to research the very complex issues that drive sports participation.

Originally posted by Grumpycat Oh dear

I couldn't see much I'd disagree with in the last post, apart from maybe the side swipe at pyag, and that's to be expected.

It's amazing having the RYA as a big buffer between government and regulation, but the price of that is having an organisation with many hats, which can mean both internal tensions where different interest groups but against each other, and a lack of true depth of knowledge in an area, leaving it feeling under represented.

CT wrote:
"It's a mystery to me why people would rather SUP than kayak, but perhaps kayaking is making itself seem too scary with the safety gear people now use?"

There is a big difference between Sit in Kayaks and Sit one. As CT says you can always tell the sit in paddlers because of the among of safety gear. Sit on tops where I live may have a buoyancy aid and suncream.

I'm sure this would put me off sit ins no matter what the advantages if I were starting kayaking again.

Talking of complexity, just sailed past a Hobie Adventure island tandem. Complex with two mirage drives but 15mins from roof rack to water and dead easy to use.

The benefit of SUPs - simple… the inflatable ones can be taken holiday for the cost/car space of a suitcase. This equates to more TOW and obviously, bang for buck

The hard ones can be surfed, river paddled, downwinder ‘raced with mates’, freestyled … you can kinda do all that with decent inflatables too, but the composite boards are still superior

As Discoball says, the vantage point is the draw that keeps people coming back - great for nature or simply getting out there and unwinding. It’s road biking on water… you get out what you put in, and it’s fine if it’s not a lot, but I’ve broken a few sweats too.

Regarding buoyancy aids - if conditions require them, fine, but I’ve been SUPping for 6+ years - never encountered a session when they were necessary; proper offshore without rescue cover, maybe, I guess?!?

if you are comparing it to high performance dinghy development for the exclusive purpose of racing against the clock, you really are missing the point somewhat.



Edited by turnturtle - 14 Aug 22 at 9:06am

I saw a guy out spear-fishing off an inflatable SUP the other day … that takes some balls, or monumental stupidity, not sure which tbh.