UK sport funding

The figures and facilities are interesting - $20 million p.a. (13 million pounds) in takings from the bar and poker machine use by 28,000 members translates into benefits like free boat storage; effectively free membership; subsidies for championships; arranging sponsorship; free beer and BBQ after every race; free races; and $500,000 p.a. other funding for sailing, including paying each 16 Foot Skiff $200 just for finishing a weekly club race, $475 for a personal handicap win in a weekly club race, and an EXTRA $10,000 prizemoney for the annual club championship and personal handicap points series. Kids are NOT pushed into squads (as that would keep them from 16 Foot Skiffs, which is what the club is all about) but Olympians are heavily supported (one got a club-owned waterfront house rent-free, I believe).

And all that largesse is centred on maintaining the fleet of 21 16 Foot Skiffs. The feeder classes (and feeding the 16s is what they are expressly for) comprise 25 29ers and Cherubs, a dozen Lasers, and 60 junior boats.

So even with enormous amounts of funding support, an ideal sailing environment (warm, open water and good winds) and high performance boats that you can (literally) get for free, you end up with about 60 "senior" sailors out of a production line of about 140 juniors at any one time. Given that many of the 60 senior sailors have been in the class for many years while the juniors are churning through, it seems that the youth/young adult dropout rate is very high even when cash, slower boats and squads aren't an issue. 

Dropout is a general problem for sports, isn't it? As Sport England says "47% of secondary aged young people are a member of a ‘sports club’ but that this drops to 17% amongst 16 to 19 year olds and then continues to decrease as people get older."

Is the drop out any worse in sailing, especially when one allows for the fact that so many of us switch to yachts in young adult years?

45-50 Lasers on a Sunday in Sydney Harbour?  We've had 52 race so far this year in our club alone (not all at once, though), and there's four other fleets within 6km, plus another 10 fleets in other parts of the city. Typical fields for most clubs on an average weekend would be from 6 to 32 boats.

It's interesting to see how a strong scene can evolve, and "evolve" would be the operative word as there is no over-arching scheme or organisation.