Nationals attendance.

seems like L123456 is getting a bit of a shoeing for stating the obvious.... it would be fun to join in, (laser sailors deserve it), but s/he's right; any regular class which hosts its nationals inland, at a generic water authority sailing centre like the place I sail, is going to be seen by some, me included, as a bit soft.    If I lived near the sea there's no way I'd opt to sail inland outside of winter times, or unless I was going to some training or a specific inland winter event.

hardly.... I can assure you in some of the boats I've sailed, it's far less physical sailing on the sea in consistent breeze than a gusty feckin' puddle in some landlocked county of englishshire.  

Originally posted by Nipper   In my experience, inland sailors learn to sail on the sea much more easily than sea sailors learning to sail inland, which is probably why sea sailors knock inland sailing so much.

Originally posted by Rupert I do get bored sailing those long sea legs at a Nationals. We spend our sailing lives spending 5 or 10 minutes max going upwind at a time, doing 45 minute races, and suddenly we go to the Ntionals and we are expeted to spend far longer hiked out and sail 2 hours for one bloody race. Yawn. Luckily, some classes have realized how daft this is and are doing more than one race per day these days.

I should think most classes are doing multiple races a day aren't they? I know the Merlins keep to a traditional format but I think all the RS classes have 2/3 races a day. I know the Phantom does too. I remember doing a 3 hour championship race back in the day but 45 minutes is the norm for us now.

Originally posted by yellowwelly seems like L123456 is getting a bit of a shoeing for stating the obvious.... it would be fun to join in, (laser sailors deserve it), but s/he's right; any regular class which hosts its nationals inland, at a generic water authority sailing centre like the place I sail, is going to be seen by some, me included, as a bit soft.    If I lived near the sea there's no way I'd opt to sail inland outside of winter times, or unless I was going to some training or a specific inland winter event. The caveat on this is that there are some locations which are 100% inland, but not seen as quite so soft because they're a bit special- Loch Lomond is one of the most beautiful parts of the UK and everyone should sail there once in their life if they get the chance.  I think anyone brought up dinghy sailing in the 90's will have a championship on Garda on that bucket list too.   The other caveat is that some boats have developed their market, even their hull form, for inland and river sailing.  Naturally it makes no sense whatsoever that such classes would host their nationals on the sea.  I don't think anyone is presenting their opinion as black or white on this.   (@duncan- I have no idea if the Lightning or Streaker falls into that latter category- quite possibly given the locations they seem to be sailed at, so no offence to the Lightning / Streaker classes)