Classes fading in popularity

One of the disadvantages with the new classes is the restricted audience. My own club, Aldridge, sail on a pond. There are a lot of other clubs in the area which sail on ponds and small lakes. This new breed of fast, sleek classes just don't fit on these pieces of water, whereas the traditional classes, GPs, Enterprises, Solos etc suit these waters well. Also, there are few sailors in the club capable, never mind want to, sail these new classes. An RS 700 and an MPS look great in magazines but you ain't going to sail one at Aldridge. 

"Mind you being an overweight middled aged git probably didn't help"

Sounds like we need to start an "Overweight middled aged git sailors" support group and I think we're the first two members!

We have 2 EPS's at Whitefriars, and they go very well indeed. For a small lake they are probebly the best of the new classes, though they have trouble against Blazes on handicap. Shame they failed...

Originally posted by JimC According to the last racing classes review in Y&Y, based on sail number increases over previous years, SMODs with less than 10 boats built include Boss (0), Iso (-31!!). L3000 (-1!), L5000(-5!), Spice(0), Tasar(0), MRX(1), RS600(3), RS400(6), B14(7).

Selling a massive number of boats isn't necessarily a sign of a successful class. Once a decent size national fleet has been established, you don't need that many boats to keep the class going.

There are no more than about 50 or 60 new Fireballs built worldwide every year, of which probably 30, maybe 40 end up in Britain. The Fireball is considered by most as a successful class at the moment, but it's just that with boats that have a competitive life of 10-15 years (I sold an 11 year old Fireball last year for £3500) you don't need to buy a brand new one unless you're pretty near the front of the fleet.

With fairly specialist classes, such as the B14, there has never been the massive rush to buy new boats as happened with the ISO/4000, so there will be a continual fairly slow stream of new boats built and the class will continue with a similar number of boats on the national circuit.

Classes such as the ISO and 4000 can survive if the boat is good enough and the class assocation enthusiastic. They may not build any boats at all for several years whilst the supply of boats which have never really been sailed are "used up". A slow return to building of new boats will follow, if the class continues to attract a decent number of people.

 

 I also owned one of the old pre X rig Blazes, and to be honest I preferred the EPS to it - sorry Blaze guys!  

No problem and we could debate sail design and why some classes fail while others prosper of course  - but the answer is already lurking in your own words - simply try any racing Blaze around today.   Almost without exception all boats have replaced the 'orrible original sail with the highly developed (and slightly smaller !) 'X' sail - the switch was years ago now .  We'd be interested in what you might make of it with the revised sailplan and can arrange a 'go' if you or anyone else is interested !

Cheers - Mike Lyons   BLAZE CLASS ASSOCIATION