Class proliferation...

This was me two years ago, 41 years old never been in a dinghy before but decided that I wanted to have a go at a fresh sport with a competitive option, living very near to Chichester harbour dinghy sailing seemed ideal.

I was nervous about getting into it, like you say there was no real clear pathway for an adult, I looked around a lot of clubs and almost decided to give up before I even started as there really was nothing much on offer for someone like me wanting to start from scratch.

I visited Dell Quay SC and I have to say it was the club that made a massive difference in me deciding to go for it and stick it out. They offered BOB (Blokes on Boats) social sailing, an introduction to racing course, they had a guest from the RYA come in and give a good overview of the rules, I attended workshops on assistant race officer and race officer training.  The regular guys racing were a huge help, they offered to go out during the week and practice race in small groups or one to one, practice starts, boat tuning etc.. The club runs beginner races for those that haven't won races before. Social media plays an important part in advertising the club, keeping member up to date and arranging stuff informally between like minded members.

I now race as often as I can and I love it, one of the best decisions ever.  If you want to get adults into sailing who have never sailed before forget the formal RYA level 1/2 etc etc courses at the beginning and get the existing club members to meet prospective members. Find out what they want, tailor some informal courses, make it as easy as possible to join and participate. The atmosphere makes a huge difference, friendly, helpful, competitive but not in an overly serious way leave that for class racing and open meetings. Clubs and their members need to change and become more flexible if they want to attract more racers which ultimately benefits those already racing.

Very, very true IMHO. Arguably what stopped boat sailing from suffering the same dramatic crash as windsurfing is the resistance from club sailors, clubs and classes. Windsurfing lacked the same structure of strong clubs and independent class associations, and also attracted more early adopters - who will by definition soon go off and adopt something else.

The "lower echelons of the Laserati" approach seems to be working better than any other approach I know of, as far as attracting new adults. The numbers seem to show it, and from an anecdotal point of view my little club has tripled its fleet in about 18 months by concentrating on Lasers. It used to basically be a Laser, a Byte C1 style mini Laser, a Tasar, and two different cats. Now we get up to nine or ten Lasers, two or three cats and a Tasar. The Laser offers a cheap, simple and tough introduction and we get plenty of close and fun racing.

Perhaps one of the real gaps is a dead simple two-person Laser type. Much as I love the Tasar, it's more of a sophisticated machine and not as easy for beginners. I s'pose the 200 comes closest.

To continue the windsurfer analogy, now that just about every brand has realised they went down a blind alley when they only promoted high performance kit and ended up creating "technological overshoot", many of them have banded together to promote the new version of the original Windsurfer, the Windsurfer LT. In considerably less than a year 800 have been sold, orders are pouring in for the northern hemisphere summer, there are events with over 100 starters, and the manufacturers are building a fourth mould to keep up with demand.

Just as windsurfing was the first part of sailing to go down the blind alley of technological overshoot, it could be the first part of the sport to realise its error and return to promoting the simple, accessible, cheap part of the sport as the main course, with the occasional side plate of spicy high speed stuff for those who like it.

edited for precision 20.48.

The closest I have sailed to that was the Icon. Sadly now fading into obscurity but was a simple boat to rig, easy enough to handle on shore and a very spritely performance for a 2 sailed boat. The only bit of complication was the dangly pole for the jib but most people would be able to work that out fairly quickly.