Is that it then?

Originally posted by Sam.Spoons If the manufacturers hadn't been so determined to sell us a new board even year maybe windsurfing would be a lot healthier than it is now. The outlawing of custom (read low production volume) boards in the transition from Div 1 to Raceboards, followed by the manufacturers dropping them and trying to sell us something totally unsuitable for 90% of venues and sailors (i.e. Formula but previously dedicated slalom boards or low volume wave boards did similar damage) killed off grass roots windsurfing.

It wasn't the manufacturers that 'killed off' windsurfing, it might have been magazines promoting only high wind, it might have been the advent of other sports entering the windsurfing supply chain, but it was definitely the RYA restrictions on one man schools in the late 90's closing literally dozens of independant schools by RYA inspectors who coincidently owned larger commercial centres allied to the RYA's then pathway scheme. One Ironical failure was that a particular school owner was not sufficiently power/rescue boat trained, (he ran the inshore rescue service for the RNLI at Pevensey) It was the RYA mismanagement of the sport that effectively killed it, just as the same mismanagement is killing off sport dinghy racing as we write.

It's all too easy for the upper echelon of one sector of a given marine business to collude with the powers that be within the RYA for its own ends, which are not necessarily ends that benefit the sport as a whole. Now once upon a time Windsurfing had a committee of vested interests working alongside the RYA head of department, it was this committee that brought about Div 1 for instance in an effort to limit the effect Div 2 was having on racing accessibility. It was also tasked with maintaining a retail structure, since it was felt the failure of the dinghy market business model had limited the wider promotion of that sport. It didn't take long however for the dinghy types to cheat the system (which was designed to only use products sourced via Retailers thereby continuing their support of the racing market,) and it dissolved into broadly what you have today.

You have to ask yourself, why is it that Holland, a country very similar to ours has such a successful windsurfing market and ours has gone away, and I would point the finger squarely at our sports Governing body. It is why all the new sports that come along are kept away from their ministrations, Kite, SUP, Wing. It's too late to do much for windsurfing now, but those of us that experienced the complete disaster the RYA wrought upon us know to keep any new sport out of their grasp.

Edited by iGRF - 24 Nov 21 at 10:33am

Don't know much about it, just that my club building had a large windsurf shop and school and disappeared overnight, eighties or early nineties, a moon light flit.

Is dinghy racing really that broken? I mean there are a number of classes with their biggest turnout at nationals this past year. Open meetings are well attended for the classes on my scope. This years "great lakes" winter series kicked off last weekend with 87 boats at Draycote. Plenty going on out there Graeme; I am not sure that racing is broken but I am not sure if makes sense for builders to keep pushing out new models for the reasons I outlined above.

Edited by H2 - 24 Nov 21 at 4:13pm

Never going to be like automobile manufacturing, changing models every ten years, old models usually gone in the next ten years, that's what griff the salesman wants, you can read into what happened with windsurfing, new model, new model, shame the owners into a new board every couple of years,what board do you have, WHAT, that's so last year.

Originally posted by davidyacht The problem with bringing new classes into the market is that you are consigned to handicap racing until there is a critical mass, which might never arrive, and residuals don’t work until this point has been reached. The only way to overcome this is to come up with a boat that is so much fun that you can accept racing in a handicap fleet.

I’ve often thought that a kickstarter campaign would be useful. Take deposits for a new class but promise to only build if you get, say, 25 deposits. And return the deposit if you don’t get 25 takers. Helps the buyer know they will have critical mass racing and helps fund the tooling for the builder.