From my perspective I would much rather sail a doublehander for social and performance reasons, but there is nothing more depressing than watching a race going on when you cannot get a crew ... which is why I most often sail a Solo.  

I really really think that part of the problem is due to the transition from teens to early twenties.  We have a predominantly singlehanded youth culture, forty years ago it was predominantly two handed with Cadets and Mirrors being the dominant classes.  Also far more kids leave home to go to University and therefore the natural progression to crewing or helming single handers is lost.

I still regularly race against many of the sailors who I learnt to sail with in Mirrors over 40 years ago, many of us never stopped dinghy sailing, were happy to sail anything that looked interesting, and were happy to be at the front end or the back end (or on the rail).

Not sure if we can ever recreate that situation, but I think something rotten has emerged Oppy/Topper Squad based training.  Though some of it is Socio/Economic which is unsolvable at a micro level.

As a general rule of thumb, most people who are really, really in to dinghy racing tend to want to helm the boat.  (I know there are some fantastic sailors who are exceptions to this... and its not meant as a dig).  Therefore it stands to reason that if their is an imbalance of desire to go sailing in a 'traditional' club level partnership - husband wife, parent child etc that it makes sense to get two single handers.... assuming the less interested party hasn't found something else they'd rather be doing instead, in which case the second boat can soon become redundant.

But will you be the one crewing?

RYA Youth Stage 4, which has to be sailed in double handers, was introduced because it was felt there was a real need to address the decline in double handed sailing amongst juniors.  I think the problem is the many clubs don't have the right sort if boats.  You will typically get more use from toppers and oppies than you will from cadets or mirrors.  I'm hoping this will change now second hand Fevas have come down in price and there are great training boats like the Hartley 12s coming through.

You will never be short of a good ride or opportunity to crew some great dinghies and boats  throughout your sailing lifetime. Once at Uni I realised I was just an average dinghy helm, compared to likes of Glynn Charles and Pistol Pete,  I realised I had better start down this path and let the masters wiggle the stick, where i could contribute by slick crew work, fleet tactics and good weather eye.  All good stuff 

It's a bit like the birth rate - you clearly need more than one birth per pair of parents to sustain a population size.

Our club has a fleet of Picos all with jibs.  They are almost always sailed with the jibs, with kids or adults sharing.  Two or three up or more.  Indeed sessions often end with the 'how many can you get on a Pico attempt'.  18 kids on a Pico which is neutrally bouyant about a foot under is something to behold.

But we as a family also insist that the kids sail singlehanded too.  If not as the youngsters in the group they would miss out on the pleasure of taking others out.

Like sex sailing is much more fun when you do it with someone else.....

And you can not beat the 'comradeship' of facing wind and water together.  Lovely 2.5 hour sail back from Emsworth with my 7 year old at the weekend.  Pretty much us, the 2000 and the birds and seal.  Great times.

Namely the perceived need of a certificate for everything.

A novice arrives at a Club, gets directed to a course level 1 / 2 whatever. Learns to helm but gains really very little experience and then gets a single hander, with low confidence , few friends and unless a pretty determined person finds it difficult to get over the hump of that first season.

If the culture of a certificate for everything was less prevalent novices would be more likely to be offered or seek out crewing places. They then gain confidence and knowledge without even realising it, some may continue crewing and some may decide to forge new partnerships and begin helming.

This is not to say there is no place for training courses, that would be a ridiculous conclusion to draw from my comments. What I am saying is that there is more than one route into sailing and it is certainly not a case of one system suits all.

Now, I never regret my time crewing, Lark, Javelin, Tasar, it was great fun but in some ways I wish I had gone through the steeper learning curve of helming sooner.

Clearly having a greater number of 2 man dinghies, (many of them high performance) than singlehanders  in the club, together with inspirational helms driving the club ethos makes a huge difference.  Crews are drawn to them like magnets, trying to glean sailing skills.

Unfortunately appearing in 2 other clubs with  a high performance 2 hander, trying to get a crew was near impossible as there were more singlehandeders  than 2 man dinghies. There just simply wasn't the kudos, incentive or more importantly the skill base to draw upon, asymmetrical kite sailing was seen to be far too fast and intense...a Merlin with strings, way too complicated to understand and master.  

So-called experienced sailors  with level 3, were way out of their comfort zone, and the path of least resistance always won, so they went down the club route of racing a cheap Laser, far more rewarding in the short term even if they plodded around at the back of the fleet. 

I'm watching the decline of 2 handed dinghy sailing I knew of my youth. Short-termism single-handed, fill up the boat park full of unused sun bleached Lasers, and the clubs wonder why the Socials are so poorly attended and no one in  their mid 20's and 30's sailing.

Clubs should also offer casual, non certificate led sessions where participants can just turn up and sail with whoever is around, with informal instruction and advice from experienced sailors and instructors.

Level 2, as it used to be known, now Basic Skills, should take a minimum of two days.  The problem is that many centres sign people off simply for having been there, without actually considering whether or not they can actually independently do what is on the syllabus, what the certificate says they have achieved.  So everyone gets misled about levels of competence.

I feel people should very much be encouraged to think of this ticket as a starting point, a grasp of the basics, like it says on the ticket, and firmly directed to more supervises sailing across a range of boats.  What I'm saying I suppose is its in the ethos of the RTC, if they tell people they can sail T L2 then they may well be giving a false impression.

It seems the risk averse, insurance obsessed world is demanding certificates for everything, which has surely rubbed off into sailing. Apart from an RYA Race Coach I don't have anything, but it is getting increasingly difficult to charter yachts without certs even though I was a Sunsail skipper 25 years ago (only need certs to teach RYA in those days), owned big boats up 44ft for over 15 years, sailed offshore including singlehanded etc. etc....

One thing I have always thought.

There are two clubs in my immediate area with very contrasting water.

One is a river club which is relatively sheltered and you rarely get anything near or above 'marginal planing' conditions. the other has a small lake which is beside the estuary where the wind seems to funnel off the Irish sea. Surely an L2 Certificate at one is going to be very different to an L2 Certificate at another due to conditions and type of water. I did my L2 in F5 on waves at Plas Menai. Very different again. So how are the comparable?