Alto Dinghy

This has got me wondering:  What is the World's hottest (most competitive) non-olympic one-design class?

The 505 has got to be in there somewhere, along with maybe the Snipe, 420, Optimist, 18ft skiff...

The keelboat list is a little easier I reckon, and would have to include the J24, Soling, Melges, Farr 40...

I guess a very competitive class would have the following attributes:

Assuming you've just gone out and bought the best boat and sails available,

1. It would be then very difficult and time-consuming to get your boatspeed up to the same level as the top guys.
2. Once you've learnt how to travel at the same speed as the top guys, they would then have to be very hard to beat tactically.

Indicators of the world's most competitive class would be things like:

• International spread of the class
• What it's sailors go on to achieve elsewhere
• No evidence of new sailors jumping in and doing well very soon
• Big names sailing the class for fun.

I actually think that the 420 could quite legitimately call themselves the World's most competitive non-olympic class, because of the massive international spread and the history of it's champions going on to win olympic medals and sail professionally. The top 10 of any 420 Worlds are all pretty special dinghy sailors.

Of the non-youth classes, I'd say the 505.

Getting the boatspeed up to scratch would be the first challenge in any new class, and I don't think it would be any harder to do in the Int. Moths than in the Etchells, it's just that in the Moths, the top guys would be legs ahead of the mid-fleet, rather than metres ahead in a slower class. Probably a similar task in terms of difficulty to gain those inches of boatspeed in an Etchells as it would be to gain the bigger distances in the Moth.