Is the Cadet finished?

Originally posted by GarethT ....the mirror and cadet, as RYA Pathway classes... To me, common sense would've said cull one of them...

Didn't the RYA remove the Cadet from its 'pathway' in the 1990s? They kept the Mirror and Optimist, and eventually decided to bring the Cadet back in after a few years because the numbers had not dwindled in the slightest.

All history now, of course. But nowadays all 3 classes (Cadet, Mirror, Feva) seem to be quite happy with their numbers, and I see no bigger overlap between them than there are with adult doublehanded classes.

As for the original post: there is no way to 'cull' a class, no matter what you think of the boat. It only dies when people stop buying them and sailing them.

The original post commented about the turnouts at World level. I only have statistics for UK National level, which I present here in case it is of interest.

Sorry, one more.

It is much easier to apply tactics when learning in a slow boat. I have noticed with adults learning to race in a whizz bang 3000 that they rarely gain the same racing knowledge as someone learning in a more simple, slower boat. Often the "slower" boat makes it round the course more quickly because of this. Those tactics can then be applied in the faster boat, of course they can.

As far as the Cadet "cull" goes (apart from the impossibility of it, of course, as Mags says), I do think it is a shame that the original purpose of the Cadet has been lost. It was designed to be easy and cheap to build. By the time I was sailing them in the 80's, they were expensive and professionally built. More recently, I believe it was even made out of class to build your own boat, when Rondar became the supplier, but I may be wrong on that, and I think it has changed again anyway.

So, in a sense, they have rather lost the original reason for being, and in a society where buying off the shelf is far more common than creating something at home, the Feva does have a big advantage.

I bought my son a Mirror (all £50 worth) when he was tiny because it is more vesatile than a Cadet, and I teach sailing in Fevas. But, despite all I said above, I think the Cadet is a fantastic boat for junior racing and training, and long may it be out there with international, high level competition.

Originally posted by Simon Lovesey <span style="color: rgb34, 34, 34; font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">Interestingly when you look at the data for this sector (slow double handed boats with spinnakers) and using National Championship attendance as the Key Performance Indicator,  the trend is fairly static,  so you could conclude the introduction of the Feva has not seen real growth just a displacement and dilution of the existing classes.  </span><div style="color: rgb34, 34, 34; font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><div style="color: rgb34, 34, 34; font-family: arial; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">As several people have said in recent posts,  we need to be moving away from a class centric view (and my boat is better than your boat arguments) to looking at categories of boats and how we can get more people sailing.

that statement is effective for the whole industry. With two notable exceptions, The Topper & Laser that provided new market segments for different reasons. In effect all SMOD builders do (RS, Laser, Topper) is cannibalise a market.

Where there marketing focus should be for manufactures, in my opinion, is in market growth. And that doesn't mean making a a new boat that is a new version of the Oppy etc... it means creating greater access to, subsidising and building awareness through the provision of facilities, that encourage the sports growth, aimed at the youth. It would be interesting to see a collective approach between the big three in that space wouldn't it! Getting inner city kids sailing? Subsidised boat programmes at clubs? State school sailing scheme?... etc... etc... Grow the market, and grow your sales far beyond market cannibalisation will ever do.