Twenty years from now

Sportives aren't competitive, at least, not according to the law. Any competition is only in the participants heads (although there is certainly a personal achievement of completing the distance or a certain time).  It's certainly a personal challenge, but if you compare it to sanctioned cycling events (time trials, road racing) there is a big difference.

Sportives are a middle ground between just going out for a ride (cruising) and a true competition (racing) where beginners may feel out of their depth. It allows the participants to practice a lot of the aspects of a proper races, without it being taken seriously as a competition.  This provides a very attractive 'in' to the sport for which sailing has not go an equivalent (club racing, dinghy weeks etc are still competitive races, unlike sportives which are not). 

At HISC i started a sportive racing a couple of years ago. No results, going through the motions of all the aspects you'd need to race with awards for participation. Unfortunately we didn't really push it enough to get it off the ground. However, been very successfully redone as the get racing club and has been a huge success last year. It mixes a lot of the qualities of cycle sportives and hopefully will continue to be successful. I think this is the future for increasing grass roots participation. 

http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/179466/HISC-Get-Racing-Club

I can find nothing intimidating about our club racing because all our members are so nice and I find it quite easy to teach basic rules to beginners. The future of our kind of sailing is racing though sometimes a new member will turn up and proclaim to only be interested in pleasure sailing. They never last however as there is nowhere to cruise to and even our lovely view gets boring after a while.

I see no reason why our little club will change that much over the next twenty years. It is much the same now as it was twenty years ago except that Supernova has replaced GP and we have electricity.

I do wish we had some juniors though who could be 20 years older in 20 years.

Unfortunately no matter how nice you are, people will always view racing as racing, and this will put some people off as they will fear getting the way or making mistakes. It's dawnting enough joining a new club meeting new people, doing an activity you're not yet comfortable with, and then on top of this being forced into a situation where you might disrupt the highlight of these very kind and friendly people's weekend. In fact, the nicer the people are, the more awkward some would feel about getting in your way! 

However, if an event is specifically targeted at beginners and improvers, then new participants instantly feel less awkward about joining in. It immediately breaks down a lot of barriers, and is one reason why inclusive cycle sportives are so popular. 

You don't see many sports where once you've learnt the basics you're chucked straight in to compete against the best the club has to offer? And yet it's the the pretty much go to approach for sailing. 

There's enough barriers to our sport in terms of equipment cost and it's technical nature, without throwing people straight in a deep end.