Endeavour

Congrats Chris.  Don't let Alan use her as light weight crew next summer though  

Ah not sure about the entry slection but the fee does include accommodation, breakfast on Sat and Sun, dinner on Sat, lunch on both days, an after race pasta mealette on Sat. I also think there is food for the training day on Friday which is provided but could be wrong. In addition to this there is coaching by HarveyHillary on the Friday. In theory the £75 entry fee and £33 insurance are all you need to spend bar travel. 

Ian

that's an interesting point, and one that I was considering myself. I think a bit comes down to the 'substitute rule' - i.e. if your national champ was invited but couldn't attend due to a family or other commitment then I don't know whether that means you lose your slot or you are allowed to 'go to second!' for example.

This then got me thinking, lets correlate the classes entered against the "National Champs Attendance Table", and then lets see whether the classes respresented are the ones with the largest nationals attendance - the short answer is no!! Of the top 20 largest nats only 9 classes were represented at the Endeavour, and whilst some of the non-attendance might be down to personal reasons from the champions it does seem a little strange that notable classes were absent.

ok so it might make sense that Oppys were not invited (but watch out for Phil Sparkes cos in 2-3 years time he'll be giving Nick Craig a good thrashing) as well as the cat classes and perhaps the keelboats (xod / squib) (although some might say sailing a xenon...) but the obvious abseentees, who had at least 60 entries at their champs are:

Laser
Laser Radial
Enterprise
RS Feva
29er
Scorpion

The Buzz, Votex and OK all had <25 entries for their nationals and yet got the nod for 'invites' to the Endevour which seems a little strange as many classes get at least 25 entries for their open meetings..

Full correlation: -

Place	Class	2006 Nats Entries	Nats Entry Rank
18	Topper	289	2
2	RS200	130	3
17	Cadet	118	5
3	Mirror	112	6
5	Firefly	107	8
4	Solo	79	13
15	Phantom	78	14
16	Merlin Rocket	62	19
11	GP14	62	20
8	Lark	60	22
1	RS400	60	23
7	RS700	50	32
23	Blaze	48	34
6	Musto Skiff	47	36
13	National 12	45	37
19	Comet	43	42
22	Supernova	30	54
14	British Moth	29	57
12	RS600	25	67
10	Vortex	23	71
21	OK	22	74
20	Buzz	16	95
9	Vago	#N/A	#N/A

*note the vago was not listed on the champs attendance table

please note this post is not meant as criticism of any individuals, but merely to provoke discussion on the grounds for why certain classes got invites with relatively poor tunouts

Is is just that lots of national champs can't be bothered with it anymore or don't fancy their chances in another class? Admittedly the clash between the endeavour and the olympic event in weymouth was poor scheduling and no doubt put paid to the laser class attending..

Right time to start campainging for the Buzz nationals next year - I might just get lucky and win that one..

Hi everyone,

It is an interesting point as to who attends the event. From memory, in the pre-race information and NOR on the RCYC Burnham website, I thought that the crews were 'invited' to attend.   How they would do this I do not know, for example in the Y & Y current National Championship Attendance Table, there are 127 classes (albeit this includes some keel boats and cats, etc.). So how is it worked out as to who is to be invited to attend the event. 

Nobody would expect every national champion to attend and some sailors may have won more than one championship, in which case I thought that the person who came second may attend.  Looking at the championship table, I notice that  some classes had less than ten boats at their championship and the Laser 5000 class, for example, only had three boats.

The last two events have been held in Xenons which were supplied by Topper.  In recent previous years, the Endeavour was sailed in RS 400's and, before that,  Enterprises (I don't know what other classes were used in the earlier years of the event). Crews had to provide their own boats which was sometimes difficult as it usually meant borrowing or hiring a boat. I know of someone who did not attend several times because he could not source a competitive boat.  I don't know how many boats Topper were prepared to supply for the events over the last two years but I don't suppose that they could be expected to provide say 50 or 100 boats as I suspect that they would not be available and there would be a massive logistics problem in getting the boats to the event.

So this brings us back to the point of just who is 'invited', 'selected' or is 'eligible' to attend the event?

Ian  (Yorkshire Dales S.C.)

Of course the event is held in Burnham because that is where Endeavour was based, at the RCYC. Moving the event  would be like sailing Cowes Week somewhere else. Or the Wilson Trophy on a Moidland reservoir.

Moving long established events elsewhere can cause all sorts of problems. Look what happend when it was proposed to sail the Admirals Cup in Dublin Bay. Never happened...the RORC couldn't let their baby fly the nest. But the venue would have been superb, with a Round Irleand as a spectacular long race (almost same distance as the Fastnet)... maybe the RORC were worried that nobody would want to go back to Cowes.

Gordon