Class Popularity

I'd love to have data on class racing at clubs- but I imagine that obtaining that would be harder than getting PY data...

I seriously don't know why so much credibility is given to the Sail Juice series, it has little to do with grass roots club activity.

Originally posted by iGRF it has little to do with grass roots club activity.

Completely agree, and one of the striking things about the numbers was that compared to other figures some classes seem over represented in SJ entries, and other pretty popular classes were completely absent. In my Cherub days we used to have pretty big turnouts in the major winter events, and now the class has very few: its just what the folks in the fleet fancy at any given time I guess.
But the reason I put the SJ figures in was that it is a different sample of popularity. No way its practical to do a proper statistical survey of what classes are sailed where, so I thought it was interesting to take 3 utterly different samples...
In general though they roughly agree, and I reckon the top 6 on that list probably are the 6 most popular classes in the country. thereafter its a bit more random.
Reckon the Laser Association needs to sit down and think about why its full rig Nationals are so very unpopular though...

Edited by JimC - 26 Feb 14 at 8:40pm

All the people who did the SJ series will also be club sailors ... probably just the keener ones who fancy a bit of winter action. It is not like the don't sail in the summer.

Interesting stats Jim, (and well done for processing them - must have taken a bit of time...)

I think what the SJ stats show, unsurprisingly, is that it is entered by "keener," younger club sailors who have more technically demanding boats, e.g. the Merlin, 29er, 'ball, skiff etc., and who are happier than many ordinary club members with winter sailing.