For my pennyworth a championship week for me is a holiday so a non hospitable venue with a risk of a poor sailing experience in the peak holiday weeks is unlikely to draw me away from home.

Some of the historically best venues imo may lose ground due to poor experiences, particularly if good racing cannot be delivered.

Once the attendance numbers drop, it is really hard for a class to climb back.

So really important for class committees not to go on whims of fancy …

One place I would be happy to return to is Tynemouth, great and welcoming club, great organisation and a challenging race area.  Ten by and Abersoch would get my attendance and not very South for me.

The trouble is these days is if you have aspirations of being in the "over 50 club" in terms of attendance there are actually surprisingly few clubs or facilities that are capable or willing to run an event of that size that will attract enough boats.

Facility based venues such as Portland or Plas Heli will attract the entire front of the fleet and you may get visitors from the front of other fleets borrowing boats. However further down the fleet you get whispers of the venue being "soulless" or "theres nothing to do" and before you know it the back 25 boats have talked themselves out of going and you are back to 40 boats. The fact that they are missing out on potentially the best sailing and racing they'll ever do doesn't enter the equation.

So to pacify the back of the fleet you make use of smaller clubs at sleepy seaside towns. Most of these clubs have a membership of less than 150 and their entire club puts their weight behind running your event (They really do want you there). To obtain the same level of race management as the "facility" venues is difficult due to manpower, equipment and sometimes location restrictions. Quite understandably the club volunteer force like to work with people they know and bringing in a race officer is not always welcomed (Though many small clubs have excellent in house ROs and some small clubs are very open to external help).

Personally if we are prepared to accept that the race management and event communication *may* only be 95% as good as facility but with the club putting 200% effort into it I think that has to be the way to go.

But I think there are less than 10 clubs that tick the boxes to deal with a fleet of 50+ that tick the boxes to bring the back of the fleet to the event - and that really is the key to numbers. And none of those less than 10 clubs is a perfect venue - there truly isn't one!

I mean it's not like any skipped a few numbers to fool us, that would be grossly cynical behaviour.

You can find other measures.

You can look at published open meeting results, how many boats are turning out to how many meetings.

You can look at appearances in big PY meetings etc.

You can look at what's for sale on ApolloDuck.

You can look at Facebook etc and see what's going on in the class, including internationally.

You can look at race reports on Y'n'Y.

What is actually important to you? Personally I want a class which has a few opens (and/or a multiple presence at PY events) which are not 200 miles away, is sailed by 'my kind of people' and looks to be there for the long run so I won't lose a load of money on something which will go out of fashion. If I was looking to do a Nationals, I would want the next few venues published and I would like them to be at venues which will attract a good crowd, not up North for political correctness reasons, or unfavourable to us as a team. E.g. if sailing with the mrs, we'd be light for some classes so not looking for a windy venue in September. I'd also consider the format of the Nationals, now I'm older, I'm not looking to do 4 races a day for a 3 day weekend.

Originally posted by JimC The other side of the coin is that if you only have championships at a handful of clubs in the south then you'll most probably end up as a regional class, not a national one.

Some South West clubs seem very popular with sailors from the Midlands Region.

The perfect venue would have plenty of rental accommodation so you don't have to drive during the week, sensible launching from a sheltered beach or similar, proper open sailing water with proper waves, but maybe enough slightly sheltered water in a bay to keep racing if it gets a bit fresh. Without sailing for an hour to and from the start line.

So that's Penzance, Mount's Bay (give or take the beach), Looe, Lyme, Weymouth (SC)..... I'm sure there are quite a few others I've not done a nationals at. There are some clubs which would tick all the boxes but AFAIK don't run Nationals, like Worthing and Christchurch.

Spot on 

You name me *any* venue and I'll find something wrong with it  - this is off the back of 6-7 year of being involved with organising champs. Organise a champs in heaven and someone won't want to go for a valid reason.

Going north is nothing to do with political correctness, and everything to do with - in most cases forlornly - trying to involve the other end of the country and there are some excellent venues up there. East Lothian have a good record of hosting big championships, Largs is the equivalent of Portland, Hartlepool have recently done some good champs in "lesser classes", Tynemouth have the Albs next year and Filey have hosted the 200s with success. Slightly further south and Abersoch and Pwllheli cater for two very different approaches to your event.

The trouble with all of these its is a trek for the southerners, and the latter two in particular as its Birmingham and turn left. But the M4 isn't a one way valve and those of us north of it have to cross it far more often than the southerners have to. As I said the number of clubs capable of hosting a 50 boat champs that people want to go to is less than 10. In that list are two facilities (Which I don't count as they aren't universally popular) and three clubs that have do so in the last 5 years.

The trouble is, many people are not dyed in the wool class loyalists any more. You offer a champs in Prestwick, someone else is putting Garda on the menu. If you look at who goes to events, there are a lot of people from North of Gloucester who seem to prefer to go South than North. If you live in Stoke, which is easier to sell to the family as a week away, Cornwall or Lancashire?

Distance doesn't matter much for a week long event, but it does for a long weekend

 I think the classes which are really healthy not only have a decent Nationals turnout, but also have people travelling from club to club for Opens and regattas through the year? And a lot of that seems to be strong in the Midlands. The old classes which endure tend to have full calendars of 'local' opens at least? And then we have international classes, with people crossing the channel in both directions. One or two classes will be considering attracting people from euroland more than Manchester. Maybe being a UK-wide class isn't top of everyone's agenda.

Originally posted by IanW The challenge for some of the smaller clubs on that list is finding enough volunteers to run these events.  The last championship we ran used over 80 individuals and with an aging club demographic we have made the decision to have a fallow year in 2024 so people can recover. As these members age the pool of fit volunteers decreases and the viability of running large championships decreases.  For members of working age taking a weeks holiday to sit on a rib / committee boat is also a big ask.

I agree. It's even more of a problem when you're looking for volunteers who can bring their own RIB or committee boat.

Is any one class actually 'of interest' to more than 10% of the UK sailing population? Even if you re-phrase that as 10% of the UK dinghy racing population, most people are not interested in many classes, beyond everyone havign a laugh at the expense of Laser/ILCA politics. A medium scale boat builder, like say Ovington, is pretty interested in classes where they sell a dozen or 50 a year. There are actually big numbers of people actively sailing in the UK, we may whine about numbers but it's still tens of thousands on an average Sunday, so a 50+ Nationals is a fraction of a % of participation.

The other thing is, beyond about 30 boats, I've never noticed events actually being a better competitor experience just by adding more boats. It may be good for bragging rights, and a few fixed costs get split more ways, but chasing scale is often a mug's game.It can be the same from an organiser's perspective, run a tidy event of a comfortable size, make a few quid, everyone is happy. Spread yourselves thin, sell yourself short?

Look down a typical “strong” class national championship entry list and it will comprise of sail makers, boat builders, people sailing under RYA, journey men, hit men sailing multiple classes many of whom rarely participate on the club scene or at open meetings.

And some national championships represent the only time many owners get to race in a reasonable size fleet, more of an opportunity for a get together of a disparate class.

The scorpion champs for one was won by a corinthian team this year who have sailed the class for decades. Sure, there are sailmakers and boat builders in there but why is that a put off or a problem? They're as entitled to sail as we are :)

Do they do club racing? Part of the problem here is - if the open circuit is strong and you live within reach - you don't really get time at weekends and over the winter there are now enough events and series to do the same. 

Interesting that the Supernova seems to get really big turn outs with very little pro participation 

Sorry thats how I read it :)

Comment about the supernovas - is that because there is little incentive? Beyond the supplier theres no scope for selling anything really.

100% hard agree - it literally killed any enthusiasm for travel when I was back in the UK.

I'd spend weeks looking forward to an event I'd carefully crafted my social calendar to acconodate, only to spend the final 72 hours madly prepping a boat (in itself a 3 hour round trip) against a forecast that I acknowledged was at best lame, at worst, unassailable... and the truth, if I went, which I usually did, it was NEVER unsailable, but numbers were definitely down on what they could have been and it made conversations around critical mass an inevitable consideration.

I am lucky in this regard . When the wind is so light sailing the D-zero will be too hard on my old body, my wife has a spare British moth I can use. Which is the perfect deep cockpit boat for  light wind conditions 

We nearly didn't do the Sheppey race this year due to the forecast, we contacted someone we knew at the club who was adamant it'd be fine so we went and had a great time in a banging sea breeze.

It depends on the venue with a lot of these things.

Ah right, I don't think we've not travelled this year, but its been a windy year!

I think we didn't travel twice last year, once due to excessive wind and needing some time spent on the boat and the other time due to lack of wind and a 220 mile round trip. I think this was pretty much at the peak of the fuel price and we hadn't pre entered for either event - would we have gone had we pre entered? The first one no, it was clearly going to be too windy and from a dodgy direction for the venue. The second one possibly. I don't think the increased fuel price - even then - by itself is a reason not to travel, in grand scheme off things the increase is insignificant, the actual fuel price however is off putting and if you've not pre entered you can save £100. 

Taking the point above I can have a great time - with largely the same people - at home for much less than £100 if I want to 

All that said I/we probably travel more weekends than most. 2-3 times per month most of the season