Is inflation impacting Nationals Attendance?

Mozzy, what were the demographics like? Does the 200 attract a reasonable bunch of young adults?

Opti aside, a quick look through the Y & Y table shows that the X Class' centenary was the only thing that got exceeded or even got close to the 200 numbers since 1998. For a single-fleet championship, as distinct from (for example) Laser titles which are divided into Open and Masters across three rigs, one wonders whether anything outside Optis has got that many for decades, apart from "celebration" events like the XOD centenary and the Dragon's 75th anniversary.

One of my classes, the Windsurfer LT, has stopped taking entres for the 2022 world titles entries at 360, and there's already a bunch of people on the waiting list. Our sport can certainly still attract lots of people if it's done right!    :-)

And a gate start drone video (terrible start from myself, if you can spot it, but there were some mitigating circumstances)

After that pathfinder finished: 11, 1, 31, 12, 21, 3, 14, 45, 47. So that's an average of just over 20th, for boats who had all finished 10th in the previous race. If you took the pathfinders results for the regatta, you would have finished 10th overall. 

FWIW I think the gap from pathfinder to the fleet is more like 2-3 boat lengths. You get washed down by the prop wash, but then jump forward on the wake of the rib a second later, so it evens out. 

If the course is really right favoured, or super even, then for sure it's an advantage, but only one you can get once in event. However, even with small shifts, on a 15 minutes beat, with boats spread over 1 mile, that small advantage soon evaporates with a 5 degree shift. 

In reality, anywhere from 60th to 1st is going to be pretty similar boat speed in clear air. Boat speed differences upwind are very small, and only really noticeable at all because boats slip back in to dirty air which then exaggerates the situation. So, I don't think quick or slow pathfinder really pays in to the equation. 

Perhaps they could have chosen 20th as pathfinder, because as the fleets get bigger, the regatta typically gets higher scoring, and 10th would have been a counter for all boats in the fleet except the winner.

Probably the best way to determine if being the pathfinder is an advantage would be to see if their race result was above or below their personal average... but that's more maths than I fancy doing! 

Our worst results were often when we 'won' the tuning run on our little bit of the gate, but in doing so meant we had sailed the unfavoured tack for too long. And some of our best results were after being spat out and instead focusing on getting in phase.