Good Question Getafix...

Originally posted by AlexM Oh Jim don't spoil the warm feeling he has about PY's :-) A clue for you James S=D/T

I have no doubt that some will come again.  I hope we see turn outs up for the other 'special' event, our club regatta.  Sunday certainly showed the club that it could cope with more boats than many would have previously thought possible.  Similarly Chi Harbour was rammed - but manageable.

I had the same thoughts as Maxi that this was best served, at least in this format as a one off event, the sense of being part of something special will decline over time and I have a gut feeling that if the same sort of event is planned next year then turnouts will be somewhat down.

However given that the foundation will want/need to continue raising funds then maybe something different should be planned, same cause, just a different style event that will get peoples interest up again.... don't ask me what that should be but I'm sure we can think of something.

Regarding spinoff, and getting club attendances up than the first thing this event has proven is that there are a lot of sailors out there who do like to get on the water, if not every week.
Most clubs are as already stated stuck in a rut, 3 Sunday races against the usual people will inspire a few, but not the majority.
Maybe the future lies with more one off events, sail it, sort it on the day, go home knowing how you did, take home the odd small prize and focus on the juniors.
Make the racing different, mix handicap with pursuit, do fun races and waterborne challenges like the kids do, relay races, just something to make it different!

Weather is the key factor, Barts was lucky, also coming on the end of a half decent summer.

All those other factors described above are relevant, but only to you committed sailors and possibly the returnees that got wind something was 'in the air' so to speak.

I commented to one of ours as we sat there totally blown off with 30 knot offshore, just as well we hadn't scheduled Barts Bash, he said what's Barts Bash? That's the problem, most of our lot are totally disconnected with yottie world, they come, they sail they go home and go about their daily work and business. I bet when they saw all the news reports they wondered why we had nothing going on, which is another tale of disillusion by the person who was due to organise it. There are only a couple of us really that are in tune to events outside of our little bubble and most of them are RYA influenced and not always positive.

So the single biggest obstacle we have at times is the RYA much as I love it on the one hand, you can't help but love to hate it on the other. The fact this probably had such traction was precisely because it fell outside of the normal scope of things, but sadly in our case the very folk who would have organised it on the ground have been so peeved off by events caused by the RYA, it didn't happen for us.

Originally posted by Rupert 3 races week in, week out, every Sunday, every year, in a never changing programme, against almost the same people. Does that describe many clubs? I'm bored with it, to be honest, and rarely do a series, just the races that happen to be on when I feel like it. On the other hand, I've put on some novice races for the juniors and their parents, and get a great response from people who, on the whole, have never done Sunday racing. The club would like me to try and get these people sailing on a Sunday - I confess, I don't think that will happen without a change somewhere in the way things are run. But any regular racing will become routine, so I don't really see that something like Bart's Bash can be used as a template - as an inspiration, yes.