Alto - Why?

The reason boats flops is their is they have no active strong fleet. People buy boats that have a strong fleet, not how good the boat is, take the laser for instance, what a crap boat, but with 190k of them kicking around you can fleet race anywhere in the world. the 200 has a strong fleet and people want to join it. but i believe that to build up the fleet to begin with the design must have that unique thing that kicks it off to get the first 50 sales in, which means 20 boats at opens and 35 at the nationals. an example is the success of the foiling moth, its taken off in the last year because nothing else is foiling and people bought them because a. its a challenge and b. its a thrill. enough people think like that and all of a sudden you have a fleet. I presume the musto skiff is the same, it was brought out and before the foiling moth was the fastest most exhilerating one man boat to sail, i expect 20 people thought that looks like a challenge, and then you have a fleet.

Anyway my point is, Does the alto have any real unique features? does it really jump out of the crowd? i personally dont see the appeal. Dont get me wrong i think the boat looks brilliant, im sure it sails well, is designed well etc but its 10 years to late onto the scene, its all be done before. Saying all this i didnt think the 500 would do to well but thats going well.

Other small classes will always be up for sharing events so thats quite easy to get around. Some classes always share with a certain other class, for instance the 29ers and 49ers are nearly always together but i gues thats not really a good example

If you say so!

I'm afraid I don't agree with the sentiment about "big fleets win". This is sheep syndrome. I want one because everyone else has one.

Some people like to think for themselves and make their own choices, and frankly I admire GRF for not taking the usual stance of "I'll see if they take off first, and then perhaps I'll get one when there's a fleet", or the even worse stand of "I'll have a plastic-fantastic XXX because everyone else has got one (even though they're crap)". He's decided what HE wants to sail, and why, and that's what counts.

We did the same (if not in an even more slightly extreme way). We worked out what we wanted to sail, and found that they were all in Aus and NZ. Did this stop us? No.

When we got our first one over, we said that if nobody else wanted to sail them, that didn't matter a jot to us, because we would be sailing what we wanted and loving every minute of it. It then turned out that we weren't the only ones, but everyone else was waiting for someone else to do it first.

Another bonus of course, is that he stands a really good chance of being National Champ this year