Is inflation impacting Nationals Attendance?

Originally posted by Grumpycat Oh dear

I couldn't see much I'd disagree with in the last post, apart from maybe the side swipe at pyag, and that's to be expected.

It's amazing having the RYA as a big buffer between government and regulation, but the price of that is having an organisation with many hats, which can mean both internal tensions where different interest groups but against each other, and a lack of true depth of knowledge in an area, leaving it feeling under represented.

Originally posted by CT249   Yep, accessibility is the key, and if we turn that key and look inside SUPping, surely learn a lot. There's actually a significant amount of SUP racing going on - the biggest SUP races get 700-1000 competitors. The toughest is 444 miles down Alaska's Yukon River. It's getting big enough for the international kayak association to end up in the Court of Arbitration for Sport to try to take over SUP racing, where it wound up looking very silly. But yes, most of the promotion and interest is just puttering around in accessible waterways and that's just one lesson for sailing. Another is the fact that people seem to want to have lessons to do something as simple as SUPpng. That seems weird to me, but that's my fault because I'm not seeing it from the novices' point of view. If people feel that SUPping is too complicated to learn easily, one can imagine how hard they think sailing must be. And the difficulty of an "insider" seeing out an "outsider" sees a sport is also illustrated by the fact that many of us can't see why you need basic lessons to SUP. It's a mystery to me why people would rather SUP than kayak, but perhaps kayaking is making itself seem too scary with the safety gear people now use?  Maybe it's the extra length of kayaks making them too cumbersome?  But more importantly, surely there's a lesson there? Almost certainly, we outside the SUP boom are missing out on a lot of other useful information that we could use to help grow sailing. In a similar way, it's baffling in some ways and disturbing in other ways that the success of the Windsurfer LT and the DF65 radio control boats are being largely ignored by the powers that be in our sport. For example, one of them has incredibly simple rig controls that cannot be adjusted while racing at all, yet it's attracting huge fleets including world champs from development classes. The other is a fairly leading-edge performance hull mass produced in cheap plastic and with no seams allowed in sails.  The powers that be should surely be doing proper analysis of such things when they make decisions about our sport. They claim to be our leaders so they should be doing a professional job of it.  PS - I may add that I have been, and am, heavily involved with growing the sport at various levels so I'm not sniping from the sidelines; rather I'm frustrated because I know from experience that we CAN grow our sport, but the powers that be are actively steering it in the wrong direction because they refuse to research the very complex issues that drive sports participation.

Sadly a body was recovered from Ullswater yesterday. A man SUP ing was reported as being in difficulties near the ferry jetty a few days ago. 

The problem with high performance dinghies is many of the UK's sailing clubs waters are totally unsuitable for them. Also they often require another step up in skill level to get the performance out of them.
Many times I've seen people with more money than sense buy the latest go faster dinghy, only a few weeks later to see it unused as they are still back of the fleet or can't keep it upright.

As for SUPs our club has a section for them, with training available, and bouyancy aids are required.

A bigger problem is visitors to the broads, either just with a SUP / Canoe , or on a hire boat bringing an SUP or canoe / inflatable canoe. Most have no training, or skill with them, they have no clue to the danger.
Most don't know you need to pay Broads Tax. £8.50 for a week, £37.78for a year for a canoe or paddle board on the Norfolk Broads.

As an example during last weeks regatta,we had 4 sit on canoes come through the Regatta 4 abreast with a large space between them, on a river 180ft at most wide.. that forced an impatient overtaking hire boat way out into the river causing a collision between two of our fleet. We had up to 75, sailing boats from toppers to 40ft broads sailing cruisers out....

Common sense should have said paddle down the rivers in single file, but no, they'd been told every should avoid them . On rescue boat duty at the time I went over to advise them to go single file on the river, they were taking up half half the width of the river further up, with inexperienced drivers of 40ft motor boats wandering around impatient to get to the next pub..

Originally posted by Grumpycat Err no , the last thing we want is a boom because then you always have bust.  What we need  is a strategy to get steady long term growth .