Classes fading in popularity

Out of interest, has anyone seen the Summer RYA Briefing? The front page headline is "Club Commodores invited to the RYA AGM Reception". What about the affiliated Class Associations? What exactly is the RYA's remit?

Originally posted by Guest#260 When they ran an awards competition for the best club or CA website recently, as far as I know they didn't tell the CA's so ALL the winners were clubs.

You are correct, and as someone who put a huge effort into building a class website, that one hurt! Some recognition for the class, if not myself personally, would have been welcome. Actually we did know about it but were told it was for clubs only.

Having dealt a fair amount with the RYA technical team over class rules administration for a non-Olympic class, I certainly thought they cared about us, and they gave a useful external view on proposed rule changes. However a very significant part of RYA revenue comes from government and lottery funding for Olympic classes and their focus is bound to follow the money to some extent.

Originally posted by Stefan Lloyd Having dealt a fair amount with the RYA technical team over class rules administration for a non-Olympic class, I certainly thought they cared about us, and they gave a useful external view on proposed rule changes. However a very significant part of RYA revenue comes from government and lottery funding for Olympic classes and their focus is bound to follow the money to some extent.

We had some good advice from the Technical team and the Legal section too in setting up the new builder for 3Ks, and were given some very useful contacts too ... certainly no complaints there.

The zone teams were less helpful when it came to arranging coaching ... just referred us to the DSM coaches list which doesn't (or didn't) include many of the better performance racing coaches.

I think there is one combined classes and clubs event ... our (2K) CA Chairman makes a point of going to the annual dinner.

I guess they do operate on a number of levels, club racers, zone champs, national sqads, etc., as well as ribs and yachties. Class racing seems to be the only area really missing out.

Maybe the RYA could do more here across all the classes, as class racing certainly hones skills not necessarily bought out at club level. Smaller classes also offer a doorway to the bigger, more intimidating class events.

A little more funding and recognition might help attract new people

Good for you ... how did you know about it?