Different way of seeing

Originally posted by The Q My main club went down to almost no dinghies about 20 years ago , having had a big enterprise Fleet and a variety of other two man boats. Then they started a sailing school, up to 80 kids on a Thursday afternoon / evening learning to sail.. All volunteer run, so very cheap to learn to sail.. But.. They learn in club Oppies .. single handed, Move on to club toppers ..  single handed, Buy their own Splash  or Laser single handed. Very few have gone to two person boats.  In the old days you learnt by crewing , then getting the offer to sail back to the club at the end of sailing, then sharing the helm then eventually you moved on to your own two man boat. What's keeping the Keelboat fleet alive is adults coming back into sailing or coming to learn in the club Yeomans.

Maybe the club should buy some Fevas for the kids to sail in together? Might help in the long run.

Club-owned boats may be the last vestige of two or three-handers at many a location where there isn't existing support for classes like FB, MR, N12, i14 or GP14's.  The demise of the Mirror as a ubiquitous youth / parent and kids boat is probably the biggest factor IMO that has gone on to hammer two-handers, that and the relative costs of sailing versus other leisure pursuits which many families now do instead or teens do them (SUP, kite boards etc) and Mum/Dad has an Aero

Originally posted by JimC Whilst I don't disagree with the premise that the Topper and Laser asymmetric boats were not very good, I think any hypotheses you come up with need to include the fact that Fireballs and 505s, once among the most popular classes in the country numerically, have similarly disappeared into the long grass and really nothing has replaced them. You can add the Laser 2 to the list too - once a very significant class worldwide and now more or less extinct with nothing apparently replacing it.