Hi all

What do people think about adopted classes? ie a club which only allows racing for selected classes? Do you know of any? How are they doing?

I wonder if, with the high turnover of classes whether it's time we saw then end of adopted classes and let 'supply and demand' take over finally.

Are there better ways of encouraging fleets to develope?

Budworth sc in the north west do it i think.

South Staffs only allow Firefly, Lark and GP14s anywhere near their lake. Although I'm not a member (my housemate is) I get the impression that club is very strong and their members do very well in those classes.

I did go sailing with them once when the club went for its annual seaside weekend to New Quay, and the members seemed very welcombing; and there were pleanty of boats there.

Hi everyone,

I think that Hollingworth Lake S.C., near Rochdale, only allow certain classes.  Their website states Merlin Rocket, GP 14, Laser and Mirror and there does not appear to be a menagerie fleet. I thought that they also sailed Fireflies but that must have been in the past.

Ian  (Yorkshire Dales S.C.)

There can't be many clubs that insist on you having a certain class.

There are MANY clubs that ENCOURAGE you into a class that is already sailed at the club. "Encouragement" can mean no handicap racing, or no boat park space, or no-one talks to you etc.

A club near me only allows adopted classes except in "special" cases. They also seem to be suffering from falling membership.

I think "adopted classes only" is a good idea to maintain fleet racing, so long as you can attract enough members for the classes you adopt. That seems to be the issue in practice. Most clubs these days need more members.

A problem with that is that if an adopted class falls from favour then you have to attract a new class from scratch, and if the classes you want are fleet racing  classes (probably) your club isn't going to attract boats until you have a 'critical mass'.

When I say adopted classes I'm talking about places where you can sail anything you like but can only race certain classes.

But other than having the odd gold medal nobody really cares about the Olympics do they? I mean the classes chosen  are not the most popular in the UK (with the odd exception) - downright quirky I'd say.

When we got invited to attend the selection trials (again) we had a big discusion about wether we should try for Olympic status (again) (not going into the history here) and had a poll on our email group. The answer was a very resounding no - 'Kiss of death' was a common theme.

At my local club we have 'adopted' classes that get their own start and exclusive open meeting also a 'handicap' fleet which is everything else.

Currently we have have Phantom, Laser, Enterprise and Solo with fleet status and then everything else. The only restriction we have is that the PY must be slower than 950 and we cannot cater for Cats (the lake just isn't big enough, although we did have a guy with an RS600 for a few weeks, that was entertaining).

We also run other open meetings but they tend to be for the more popular classes and tend to have to share the lake with club racing.

Seems to work quite well, we have a pretty full dinghy park and pretty full membership.

Paul

I personally believe that Handicap racing is a very poor second too class racing and so do all I can to promote class racing. As for restricting classes?? There is a distinct danger nowdays that new people will buy from a huge variety of classes, the danger being they have no one to sail against in the same class, get disheartened (is the boat crap, is their sailing crap? is the boat set up properly etc) and start appearing down the club less and less. After a year they vanish...

For me the advantage of getting them into an adopted (promoted?) class is that they immediately get help and assistance, from other people sailing that sort of boat. Obviously the adopted/promoted classes are going vary according to local conditions. Attrition amongst new sailors is high, especially if they feel left to their own devices. If they buy into a local class they can get fleet training etc etc

Having recently tried to obtain a PY number from Topper without success, all I can do is take an educated guess for one of our newbies who bought a Magno against our advice. By all accounts the boat sails strangely (from an experienced sailor), but we don't know if that's due to set up etc, or wether it's just a quirk of this particular boat.

Big advantage in restricting people to certain boats until they know what they are doing and can make an informed choice about what to buy.

I beleive Budworth has a waiting list for its GP fleet?, if so they must be doing something right!

Isn't the opposite the case? If you are the only club for miles, potential members don't have anywhere else to go, so you can tell them what to sail. If you are short of members (and most S coast clubs are), then making potential new members join another club so they can sail their preferred boat may be the route to oblivion.

All interesting stuff and valid arguments that I agree with broadly (grumble, grumble),

What about this situation tho? You are a newbie, there is a nice club on your doorstep with no restrictions in terms of membership size, water size and anything else but you can only sail 49er, RS800 or Musto Skiff because the club is trying to promote high performance sailing? The next nearest club is over an hours drive away. It'd be a bit daft eh?

My also limited experience...

CLub 1 - Bewl Valley - fleet starts for Wayfarers, flying fifteens, lasers and optimists IIRC, but good strong fast and slow handicap fleets. Within the handicap fleets, classes with more than 8 boats get fleet prizes & results.  Seems OK to me.

CLub 2 - Rye Harbour - very small club, no two baots the same, not even sure if it still exists!

Club 3 - PDYC - club fleet of Laser II's, Lasers and optimists.  great racing, great atmosphere

Club 4 - Changi SC - Taipans and Optimists.  Taipans growing, but dinghy sailing is virtually non-existant.

Bewl Valley is definitely the most successful model as they make provision for all and special provision for the most numerous.  The other clubs are small, but PDYC worked well with limited choice because these classes were accessible.  Racing at Changi suffers because the Taipans are just too damn expensive for too many people even if they are fantastic cats.

To sum it up, if the venue is limited, then restricting classes to those that are accessible and suit the venue can be great.  BUT using a SMOD other than a Laser is risky because the classes do die eventually.  Personally I think classes like N12's & Merlins are great for this because the development means the front of the fleet are upgrading so there is a supply of good second hand boats.

If you were Matt's perfect club - I believe you would be pretty short sighted to restrict yourself to 49er, RS800 and Musto Skiff with no feeder classes.

Just noticed this is what Weir Wood are debating at the moment...

http://www.wwsc.org.uk/whatwesail_discussion.htm - http://www.wwsc.org.uk/whatwesail_discussion.htm

Actually they seem to be debating recommended classes, which is not the same thing. This thread is about only allowing specific classes to race. 

Hardly "debating at the moment".

It is dated 2001.

But the information on the classes is well presented and thought through, and it does seem to give a good range of different boats that are suited to the water. Does anyone know the effect 4 years later??

As a member of Weir Wood, I can say that there are a considerable number of Laser 2000's (about 21 ish), probably 14i (ish)  200's. 8 or 9 Fireballs, about the same number of 400's.  A few of the Enterprise sailors have moved over to Laser 2000's but still a fair turnout of Ents.  Alot of Lasers, and half a dozen 600s.  3000's are regularly out  in high winds mainly sailed by youths.  Quite a few Solos.   Big Oppie fleet.  There is also a wide spread of other classes.

Oh, nearly forgot, 6 x 2.4meter and probably the same number of ff15's

Sunday morning racing is Fast Handicap, Laser Fleet, Slow Handicap. 

Even in the direst winter sailing conditions there will be about 40 boats out on a Sunday morning.

All good fun and friendly but competative stuff, and the recommended classes suit the water.  (However I don't sail one of them).

Hope this helps.  Pop down and see us sometime.

I'm very impressed with Weir Wood getting 40 boats out during the winter.  Here at Bough Beech (only about 10 miles away) we were congratulating ourselves for getting 42 the weekend before last.  We don't really have any fleets - you might like to read my article on the website about recommended boats.

http://homepages.rya-online.net/BoughBeechSC/boats.htm - http://homepages.rya-online.net/BoughBeechSC/boats.htm

Hi Redback.

We don't do badly as far as I can see. Mind you, one guy was saying that back in the early 90's he'd regularly see 70 boats out on a Sunday morning. .  Bit of a "when I was a lad"  type thing. 

I'd already seen your article on the site. ('cause I'm a nosey b****r).

We actually have hundreds of boats in the boat park.  All flavours catered for so long as they are used and paid for.

I think we have 450 boats in the boat park and sometimes only about 25 out racing on a Sunday.

I'm quite the opposite with last weekend off the first time for a year and this weekend the boat stays in the compund because i'm doing a duty