Something So Right

Originally posted by Paramedic Is championship attendance still a fair assessment of the health of a class? The trouble is these days is if you have aspirations of being in the "over 50 club" in terms of attendance there are actually surprisingly few clubs or facilities that are capable or willing to run an event of that size that will attract enough boats. Facility based venues such as Portland or Plas Heli will attract the entire front of the fleet and you may get visitors from the front of other fleets borrowing boats. However further down the fleet you get whispers of the venue being "soulless" or "theres nothing to do" and before you know it the back 25 boats have talked themselves out of going and you are back to 40 boats. The fact that they are missing out on potentially the best sailing and racing they'll ever do doesn't enter the equation. So to pacify the back of the fleet you make use of smaller clubs at sleepy seaside towns. Most of these clubs have a membership of less than 150 and their entire club puts their weight behind running your event (They really do want you there). To obtain the same level of race management as the "facility" venues is difficult due to manpower, equipment and sometimes location restrictions. Quite understandably the club volunteer force like to work with people they know and bringing in a race officer is not always welcomed (Though many small clubs have excellent in house ROs and some small clubs are very open to external help). Personally if we are prepared to accept that the race management and event communication *may* only be 95% as good as facility but with the club putting 200% effort into it I think that has to be the way to go. But I think there are less than 10 clubs that tick the boxes to deal with a fleet of 50+ that tick the boxes to bring the back of the fleet to the event - and that really is the key to numbers. And none of those less than 10 clubs is a perfect venue - there truly isn't one!

Originally posted by eric_c not up North for political correctness reasons,

Absolutely **** all to do with political correctness. If you never stray from the arc stretching from say Hayling to Pwllheli then mid to tail end of fleet sailors from about three quarters of Great Britain aren't going to turn up, and potentially serious sailors in that area bye and large aren't going to be interested in a class that never has a championship within reach. And while there are more active sailors down south, it means that you've about halved the potential catchment for your class. So if you're serious about being a UK wide class, not just a southern clique, then you do need to spread the championships round the country, not just go to Weymouth every year.

Originally posted by eric_c The perfect venue would have plenty of rental accommodation so you don't have to drive during the week, sensible launching from a sheltered beach or similar, proper open sailing water with proper waves, but maybe enough slightly sheltered water in a bay to keep racing if it gets a bit fresh. Without sailing for an hour to and from the start line. So that's Penzance, Mount's Bay (give or take the beach), Looe, Lyme, Weymouth (SC)..... I'm sure there are quite a few others I've not done a nationals at. There are some clubs which would tick all the boxes but AFAIK don't run Nationals, like Worthing and Christchurch.

Edited by Paramedic - 19 Sep 23 at 7:22am

^^absolutely^^