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Chris 249 View Drop Down
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    Posted: 21 Jan 16 at 10:45am
Yes, that's pretty well proven by stats -  but the sailing media and a lot of the sailing "authorities" keep on ignoring real life, and keep on believing that Joe and Joanna Average will watch a foiler and then go out and get inspired to buy a Beneteau or RS.
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RS400atC View Drop Down
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Posts: 3011 		Post Options Post Options   Quote RS400atC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Jan 16 at 2:57pm
Originally posted by Chris 249



-height: 22.005px;">* Hobart and Sydney are of course the two cities involved in a certain highly-publicised ocean race.  However, that doesn't seem to drive high participation rates; Sydney's participation rate is middling and Hobart had an intense and large racing scene for many years before the Sydney-Hobart started up.  Secondly, the other cities that are the finishing points for major ocean races (Gladstone, Coffs Harbour, Southport and formerly Mooloolaba) do not have very strong sailing scenes.</span>



Spectator 'sport' is almost completely irrelevant to participation sport.
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ChrisB14 View Drop Down
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Posts: 101 		Post Options Post Options   Quote ChrisB14 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Jan 16 at 11:51pm
Originally posted by Chris 249

One survey was done a few years ago for Yachting Australia.  It is at

http://www.yachting.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/yac-product-positioning-brand-strategy.pdf

[...]

Thanks! Makes for an interesting read.
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PeterG View Drop Down
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Posts: 823 		Post Options Post Options   Quote PeterG Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Jan 16 at 9:27am
Originally posted by realnutter

Originally posted by cad99uk

Basic Mirror kit in 1968: £68 19s. Paint extra, spinnaker extra. Rowlocks included


Owners work not costed....

I bought a one year old, well made Mirror in '66 which had just won a series in Plymouth for £80, so the owners work didn't get valued very highly, I'm afraid. Of course that £80 would be around £1400 at today's prices. Allowing for improvements in earnings above inflation over that time I suspect the effective cost of getting on the water isn't that different.
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iGRF View Drop Down
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Posts: 6499 		Post Options Post Options   Quote iGRF Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Jan 16 at 9:22am
Pretty much sums up a similar report we commissioned for a windsurfing company in the early nineties as take up was sliding. In brief it came back; 'Inaccessible, elitist and too difficult to bother with anyway', that was shortly before the RYA decided to close all the one man schools and develop the large corporate organisations.

Without schools to teach sports like ours and promote the activity you'll never keep up with the natural wastage of kids getting jobs, folks getting married, moving job and the rest of what the world throws at us.

The trick being missed at the moment which could be particularly beneficial to sailing is the high percentage of my baby boomer generation retiring yet more active than ever before, where do they go to learn? Who's trying to encourage them into the fold? How will they even get to know there's a network of more than willing clubs to acommodate them and who could be encouraged to run courses for adults..


Edited by iGRF - 18 Jan 16 at 9:24am
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Chris 249 View Drop Down
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Posts: 2041 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Chris 249 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Jan 16 at 11:22pm
Originally posted by ChrisB14

Originally posted by Chris 249

 
Sorry, and I think I'm repeating myself here, the belief that people think that sailing is boring is contradictory to the two major surveys about the attitude of the public towards the sport.  They are NOT turned off because it is boring, they are turned off because it is difficult, expensive and inaccessible.

We are once again back to the basic issue that some of us prefer to rely on actual data that shows what sectors of the sport are fading and which ones are doing well, and also on actual objective data about why people do and do not do sports and in particular sailing.

Yay for real data! Do you have a link at hand for those surveys?

Originally posted by Chris 249

 
On the other side, those who want to push the high-performance side rely on assumptions that it will generate more interest, but they have not shown any evidence to back this up.

I think a two pronged approach would make sense: some sparkle to get the imagination going (the high performance side) on one hand. But on the other hand a means of getting people into boats. Easy and affordable, lowering the hurdle. Basically, something along the lines of what the Mirror originally was: Design something that is accessible to a wide part of the po 1pulation and market it to that target group.

Comparing the large dinghy sailing scene in the UK with the situation in e.g. Germany, where dinghy sailing occupies a small niche, I think the Mirror and similar initiatives are very likely the reason for the difference. 

Just a thought. And surely I am not the first person to say this.


One survey was done a few years ago for Yachting Australia.  It is at

http://www.yachting.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/yac-product-positioning-brand-strategy.pdf

The part about the general public's perception of the sport is at pages 19 and 20, also 35-39, but there is lots more sprinked throughout.   Pages 34 and 38 are intriguing, for example - they show that the cities in which people are LESS likely to be interested in sailing in the future are the ones in which MORE people actually sail.  Sydney has by far the highest interest, but a middling level of participation. Hobartians are apparently uninterested in sailing, but 5% of them actually do it.  The sample size was about 1000 people per city so I assume it's reasonably solid.*

Pages 15 and 18 are interesting - they show the difference between the sports that people are "fanatical" about and the sports that people actually do. There used to be a commercial survey of sports participation and spectating (the Sweeney Report) that also showed that there is basically no statistical relationship between watching a sport and doing the sport (well, people who DO a sport may watch it, but it's not usually the other way around).

The other report was done for North Sails and the old Laser/Sunfish company in the USA in the 1990s.  The actual results are not available as it was a commercial project, albeit one for the long-term health of the sport, so I asked Peter Johnstone who commissioned it.  Basically, as he told the New York Times "Market research showed that many people were intimidated by sailboats, viewing them as too expensive, too complicated to operate and too easy to tip over."  I thought I had more quotes but I think they're on my other computer.  This survey was also reported in the sailing media but I haven't got the results to hand.

Significantly, although PJ is a performance sailor himself (he was involved in the OD14, arguably the first "production skiff", as well as the 49er and Gunboat) he says that the survey showed clearly that non-sailors did NOT think that sailing was boring - they thought it was too hard.

There are also other studies that do not address either sailing or whether there is a direct link between watching a sport and doing the sport, such as the work of Wladimir Andreff of the Sorbonne.  However, this work also confirms that sports that people watch are very often not the ones that people do.

* Hobart and Sydney are of course the two cities involved in a certain highly-publicised ocean race.  However, that doesn't seem to drive high participation rates; Sydney's participation rate is middling and Hobart had an intense and large racing scene for many years before the Sydney-Hobart started up.  Secondly, the other cities that are the finishing points for major ocean races (Gladstone, Coffs Harbour, Southport and formerly Mooloolaba) do not have very strong sailing scenes.





Edited by Chris 249 - 17 Jan 16 at 11:25pm
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realnutter View Drop Down
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Posts: 129 		Post Options Post Options   Quote realnutter Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Jan 16 at 9:17pm
Originally posted by cad99uk

Basic Mirror kit in 1968: £68 19s. Paint extra, spinnaker extra. Rowlocks included


Owners work not costed....
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iiiiitick View Drop Down
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Posts: 240 		Post Options Post Options   Quote iiiiitick Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Jan 16 at 9:12pm
Double handers are a bit of a problem but plenty of singlehanders at bargain prices. We have Lightning 104 bought 13 years ago for £300, won 4 Nationals and I did have Byte CII number 406 which cost me £500 and won nats (not in my hands) before being burnt to death by vandals. Just avoid arms race classes.
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cad99uk View Drop Down
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Posts: 187 		Post Options Post Options   Quote cad99uk Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Jan 16 at 9:06pm
Basic Mirror kit in 1968: £68 19s. Paint extra, spinnaker extra. Rowlocks included
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realnutter View Drop Down
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Posts: 129 		Post Options Post Options   Quote realnutter Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Jan 16 at 9:03pm
Originally posted by RS400atC

I think the biggest thing missing is an attitude of encouraging young skint people to have a go in a cheap old boat. Too many of us are spending too much on our boats, and too many people have a bad attitude to people with less bling or commitment. If there were good people to race against in cheap old boats it might be fun?


Indeed...  As I said, if we all invite our mates out to play in whatever tubs we sail, then a few will get the bug and buy their own tubs...

The right club helps.. mine hasn't batted a collective eyelid at me turning up with a 50 year old Minisail, and a 30 year old N12...  Club fees are by a long way the most expensive part of sailing for me...

It's got to be the way forward....
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