Twenty years from now

Wonder where this is, interesting talking about how sailing will change over the next couple of years.

Currently small clubs (non for profit organisations) turnover a few thouasand a year.

This must be a big club and mariner!

On a windsurfing note.....A very old friend of mine's brother was the guy drowned in Lancashire last weekend. Very sad.

Get good enough on even recreational windsurf kit, and you'll rip any dinghy apart for pure speed and adrenaline charged blasting.  I can pretty much sail faster than any other dinghy on my windsurfering kit in the right conditions- F4-5+, but that doesn't mean I could beat one around a course on the same kit- they are just not designed for racing in that manner.  A proper course racing board could- but they're 3.8m long and far too technical for most windyplankers these days.  

I agree totally with what you are saying, higher performance boats are tedious to learn to sail, and unless you've got one with enough power to weight ratio to get it planing on white sails upwind, then frankly they become even more irksome once the novelty value wears off.

Just look at the RS100 - 40+ boats at events when they were first launched, now they're lucky to make double figures, even with a consolidation in the rig sizes.  

The Aero is clearly a better all-round product for average dinghy racing and I can fully understand why several ex-100 owners traded in for them.  

Another good point that I very much agree with, and something that was mentioned in another thread.

Newer boats for a while, fad boat or asyms seem to have been designed with going fast/blasting in mind. 

Which as pointed out is slightly ironic, as they tend to be a bit of a dog when slogging back up wind and the proportion of time you are beating increases in comparison to the amount of time having fun down wind. Or something like that. Gets into windsurfing territory. You see them on the Marine Lake at West Kirby. They reach down the lake then jump out and walk their board back up wind. Bit more difficult with a sailing boat

For me speed is actually irrelevant if you are all in the same class (or compensated by PY), but then I can to dinghy sailing from offshore (over 2-3 days if not more) racing so maybe my mind set is slightly different.

For me racing is about working the boat hard to get your nose in front, tense tacking battles up the last beat, picking the shifts, engineering a passing opportunity (our lake is quite small and it can get a little follow the leader at times). Admittedly speed is fun and a bit of a thrill but close racing is even better.

The other thing is, the higher the performance of the boat (the more speed) the more costly a mistake is

Even have my own sit on and 'Run Forest' T shirt.