There was a waiting list to join Chew when I was a member there, around the time jpbuzz was in nappies. So I don't think that you can conclude that dinghy sailing is growing because Chew has a waiting list today. The number learning is not much of an indicator either. It is the number sticking around the sport for several years or more that matters. For what it is worth, my impression is that participation in sailing has been pretty constant over the 25 years I've been involved. The main difference has been that more people are doing opens, fewer doing club racing, and clubs struggle more every year to find the volunteers to keep running.

Draycote

Er it seems to go in cycles from what I can tell.

{Back to cadets as always} but Cadet nationals attendance has been higher in the past then saw a decline 5-10 years ago but is now picking back up, But the bad thing about this is that there are fewer people sailing at the clubs and many of the clubs are having trouble keeping up regular sailing for the members that dont travel. (we used to travel most weekends) This has reduced the number of new members that are coming into the class. The cycle has moved on so that now there are more boats that chose to stay at the club week in week out rather than traveling all the time so the open/national event attendance is down but we are managing to bring new people into the sport better.

This points out the flaw in nationals attendance tables etc, and waiting lists dont show anything realy, because our club should have a waiting list that is longer than it is because they waive the waiting list for anyone joining via the cadets :) {ya great club}

I think you have to look at peoples attitude towards sailing, the publics awarness is higer now than it has been for quite a while. And I do feel that dinghy sailing is on the up, we have a record number of cadets at our club now {7 there this weekend whilts we have 7 helms out at worlds in spain)  and we regulaly have 3,4 or even 5 club boats out (and that is only on a sat - non club racing day)

I think clubs are seeing more lifestyle box tickers doing learn to sail courses, 1 year horse riding, i year tennis, 1 year sailing and so on. This keeps club membership up, although it is a transitory membership, and of course it keeps the learn to sail courses full.

The real key is sailors at club level, in my experience this would normally be 30 or so hardcore sailors who also may do a bit of travelling, and a number of occassional sailors.

How many clubs have a membership of 500 with say 40 ents (or RS200's or gp's etc) in the dinghy park but you never see more than 4 or so out on the water at anyone time?? It's active regular sailors that should be the real guage of the health of the sport. Nationals attendance is all very well but getting a week off work to attend can be hard.. perhaps inland championships are a better guage? a weekend is normally easier to get brownie points for :-)

In the land downunder, sailing ebbs and flows. You can get 5 lasers in a club race one year down from 20 a couple of years prior. But they generally go to another class, like 12's where at Lane Cove http://www.lc12ftssc.org.au/ - http://www.lc12ftssc.org.au/  18 were racing last season. Powerboats is where the UNCOORDINATED people who like to be seen. The skilled people will always sail

This was posted earlier. The New South Wales Government has BANED jet skis from Sydney Harbour.

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I have moved around too much to know for sure if sailing is in decline but there are a couple of consistent trends I have noticed at clubs with yachts & dinghys...

Standard conversation in the bar of all the yacht owners laments the reduction in the number of boats in the racing remembering the good old days when they all sailed dinghys and had 20 to 40 boats on the start line. 

Now they all sail yachts with 4 to 6 people on board and only get 8 to 10 boats on the start line and wonder where all the other boats have gone...

yes the waiting list for chew is about a year now but if you can get seconded by some1 who is a member you will stand more chance

Depends where you are. There are keelboat and sportsboat classes in the Solent regularly getting 30-40 boats on the line, and more at major events. You don't often read about it because Y&Y doesn't seem very interested in reporting it.

I don't think sailing clubs having waiting lists indicates the health of the sport - more like (sweeping generalisation) lack of foresight and development.

Nationals attendance is a better guide as it show's numbers of those committed to the sport rather than taking a passing fancy. Our nationals attendance has been stable (or stagnant?) for years.

It's not anybody's job to do "development" though, is it? Clubs are there to cater for their existing members, not to grow like commercial businesses. Obviously they need to attract enough new members to replace those who leave for whatever reason but that's not "development".

Most clubs would say they are there to promote the sport of sailing as well - my old club had it in it's constitution and at least some I've seen that lease the land/water from a water company also have this as part of the lease - if it were just for the current membership and there were people being turned away this would be seen as a bit elitist.

By development I mean increasing boat parking spaces or launching facilities. If there was no development we would all be launching off the beach and getting changed in our cars.

The same houses that are currently worth more than those in Knightsbridge no doubt.

Blimey, I've had experience of both (from the outside) and I'd say she was spot on personally.

Have you observed the behaviour of a lot of Oppie parents? Absolutely yes, it is like the Pony Club. Middle-class parents push and shove their offspring into becoming successful and middle-class in their turn. That's what good parents do.

Sailing elitist? Well I'm not certain what the word means, but if it means that most people who sail are from the better-educated and more affluent parts of society, how could any objective person deny that is true? Who sponsors sailing? Answer: Volvo. They have done their research.

There are clubs in the SE with commercial sailing schools on the premises and have been for years. I've belonged to quite a few clubs over the years and only one does any training for adults (as opposed to Oppies etc). I think the volunteer-based club is coming to the end of viability: not tomorrow, but in the next couple of decades. While I hate golf with a passion, it makes an interesting comparison. The socioeconomics of golfers and sailors are probably pretty similar. If you join a golf club, they don't generally expect you to spend some of your weekends mowing the greens or serving at the bar. When you join you are buying a service. I can think of some keelboat-orientated clubs which are pretty much the same.

Not anecdotes: personal observation over a period of years. And if you read the whole thing I said "That's what good parents do".

If you think Oppies = Good, Pony Club = Bad, perhaps you have a few stereotypes of your own to attend to.

Seems to have been a well-informed bloke in this case. http://www.hisc.co.uk/fees.html - http://www.hisc.co.uk/fees.html  Strewth, that's more than some clubs with "Royal" in the name. HISC is a great club though.

But who can honnestly say that sailing isnt an elitist sport. I have been sailing 10 years and have been al over the country and abroad with my sailing and i can count the number of non 'white middle class' sailors i have met on my fingers. That doesnt mean that we actualy care where people come from or their background etc but it is just something I have observed. So you can understand why 'outsiders' have this preconseption.

The golf club link well that is interesting, I think it would definatly take a long time for the voulenteer mentality to dei out from sailing but yeah it may end up being the future of sailing clubs.

As to the lack of youths continuing in sailing after they leave the youth clases, It is definatly true that only about half continue for more than 2years after leaving the 'saftey' of their chosen youth class. This does have somethign to do with the onset of exams etc, then leaving for uni and haveing to scedule more time for socialising wiht friends etc. Also the parents get less willing to be dragged all over the country for the sailing events - or even just to the club at weekends. Also as there are many more adult classes they end up jumping from a fleet of 100+ boats to >60 (maybe) they enter different types of racing and a much closer knit group of sailors. These things all add together to mean that alot of sailors wil leave sailing (even if only for a while) they will probably be the people who will always be more interested in the sea and sailing and might go back to sailing at the club sporadcaly but they wont get back into sailing with the same level of comitment as they had as a youth (it comes out of their own time and pocket now)

I do admit we have a few more of the working class/middle class borderline people at our club and we (as a club) are building an extension to our club ourselves - a thing the counsil couldnt get their heads round, why notget people in to do it?- there is still a lot of good will towards the volunteer lead clubs in my area but moving further south and up in the price range of membership etc (dont comment on the sweeping statement there) there seems to be a more il pay more to do less work attitude. which while it may work for them doesnt work for me.

I still don't understand though, why the likes of Red Bull who sponsor 49er sailors don't use 49ers in their advertising - after all they have got wings....

Well it's a theory but is there any quantitative evidence it is actually true? Asymmetrics have been around a long time now e.g. the ISO was launched in 1993. Low maintenance plastic boats have been here for 35 years, so these developments really aren't as new as you imply. RYA says sailing participation is declining and I don't personally see any increase in the numbers sailing. As for people coming back into dinghy sailing from windsurfing, people have always been doing that. It was my own route into dinghy sailing.

To be honest sailing has really benefitted from the last 3 Olympic games - Savannah and Sydney most of all though I guess.  At Savannah sailors were centre stage because of the distinct lack of medals in other sports.  Ben Ainslie, John Merricks and Ian Walker got medals and media attention.  Sydney was even better because the focus remained on sailing because Ben was there again.

This focus has raised the profile of sailing as much as the new Skiff type boats.  If you are involved in this forum by and large you are into the sailing scene so it is difficult to comment on the exposure sailing gets elsewhere.  But how often do we as sailors actually try and convince others to join in or take newcomers out for a sail???

Have you ever gone round your non-sailing friends and invited them down to the club for a summer barbie and a sail??

At the risk of stirring up the Pony Club vs Oppie Circuit again, I don't think we should get hung up about it as neither of these fine institution represent their respective sports as a whole.

The major thing they have in common is that they are made up of quite small children who (at least when they started) don't really know what they are doing so require a lot of help from parents.

I expect most of them struggle with the pressure put upon them by their parents and when they are allowed to move on and be a bit more relaxed about their sport some actually turn out to be quite normal.

Perhaps the Topper and the Opptimist feeding into Laser route can be blamed for the people dropping out once they loose the support of parents.

If you sail a single hander you have no option but to buy a boat and arrange transport. With double handers there is always the option of teaming up with someone older who has a car and boat and of sharing the costs.

Some youths who have got used to using shiny new quality parent provided kit have difficulty in stepping into an old shed of a boat which is about all you can afford when just starting out on your own

Excellent - keep up the good work...

I think the only problem is that some sailors don't really want to open the sport up (not all of them) because they feel it should be an elite sport, and that may be where the attitude that all sailors are rich, snooty yachtsmen comes from!

I personally don't think there is a decline in dinghy sailing - Chew is holding (wed, thur and today) Junior July and there are plenty of instructors, eager kids (some of whom have never sailed before) and parents who are willing to do anything to help!!! If that shows that dinghy sailing is declining, then I'd be surprised!!!

The attitude of sailors has nothing to do with it. The image of sailing comes from the general media, who (if they cover sailing at all) focus on big glamourous boats with well-funded PR operations which can feed news stories to journalists. Such boats are inevitably (and for the most part realistically) associated with the wealthy. Except for a couple of weeks every four years (guess which), dinghy sailing is of zero interest to the general media - and why should we expect otherwise? How much coverage of other participant sports do you see? 

I heard a figure about 5 years ago that sailing was in the top three organised sports in terms of participant numbers. I think it came from Shroeders but as i don't know what they do I can't comment on it's validity.

A well-known market research company provides the statisctics on sports and leisure participipation which a lot of organisations and companies use for planning. I won't name them, to protect the guilty, but I happen to have access to their subscriber-only reports. A while ago I looked in detail at the participation numbers for another sport (not sailing) and they were complete rubbish. Anybody who knew anything about the sport would know they had to be several times higher than reality. You couldn't fit the numbers they were reporting into the facilities available. It turned out that the statistics are mostly based on self-reported surveys, and basically people lie to make themselves sound more interesting. They are actually coach potatoes but say they are out doing this sport and that every month, when the reality is they tried it once 2 years ago.

So don't take any of these statistics at face value.

In 2002 McKinsey did a piece of "pro-bono" strategy work for the RYA (McKinsey are arguably the world's leading management consultancy company). They concluded sailing participation is in marked decline. I can't remember how they reached that view and the report no longer seems to be available on the RYA website. However if anyone has a handle on club memberships, it ought to be the RYA. This is because if you run an RYA-affiliated club, you are supposed to report annual membership numbers - at least that was the case when I used to be secretary of a small club.