Dinghies VS Cats

"a lot of people leave dinghys for good once they have raced the high proformance cats."

Is that what happens in the UK? Doesn't seem to happen much here in Oz.....our cat fleets seem to be mainly long-term cat sailors.

The reason Cats are more popular in Holland is that most of the sailing there is on the north sea and thru big rolling surf.  You cannot launch most (any?) mono's thru big rolling surf, where as you can cats.

 

and north sea water temperatures to complliment it.

 

Then again, cold seas mean better sea breezes when there is little or no gradient wind....

It is kind of a culture thing

I really don't know why cats don't appeal to me when I like fast motorbikes and good downhills on a racing push bike over 50mph.

I'm sure if I went on cats in warm water with a scantily clad scandonavaouly born instructoress I could be persuaded...

Without wanting to be too harsh, maybe it's a little bit tough for you to complain that they are looking down on cats, when you run around with a tag implying that no-one should sail slow boats (like the boats most people sail)? Don't you think that such an attitude may be part of the reason some people are not too fond of cats?

Maybe also the comparatively small number of cats could be due to the facvt that it seems that there aren't as many cat sailors out there training the new sailors.

It seems to be the mono sailors who are out there, running classes for kids in boats like Optis and Mirrors. Then they progress the kids into 420s etc.....then the cat sailors want to come along and say "now a dinghy sailor has spent hundreds of hours teaching you to sail and running classes for you, you should move to cats instead of sailing that slow boat, life's too short". No wonder the mono sailors get a bit annoyed! And by that time, the kids have a monohull mindset and normally they don't want to sail cats. It's not that they are anti-cat, it's just that they look for different things from sailing.

This isn't cat-bashing from outside - similar comments come from a successful international builder of high performance cats. And windsurfers have been losing numbers because they largely ignore the kids, too (just mentioned that because I love windsurfers and wanted to underline that it's not just a cat problem, but a problem for any part of the sport that does little to encourage new sailors). So surely cats could get more new sailors if they put in the time and effort to teach them from a young age. Where, for example, is the cat sailor's Opti and Radial?





Edited by Chris 249