Ive seen the view that this will see the return of more class racing at clubs as these now none traveling sailors will push for more class racing at their  home clubs or simply move to clubs that do offer it. 

Personally I have my doubts, (it wouldn’t work at my club and it would  be a 140mile mile round trip to class race ) but what do you all think? Will this become a trend ? 

That certainly sums up my sailing experience.

At our little club we have Lasers and are trying to promote a "band" approach, where we will encourage people to buy something roughly between a Tasar and Radial in speed. The idea is that down here that band fits in many of the popular classes across an enormous range of types, from Windsurfer LTs to trailerable yachts. It should give people fairly good racing while still allowing choice, whereas in an earlier era the boats were all so different that no one got a decent race.

Yup, that's where I'm at. The right boat for me is the Blaze as I do most of my sailing on holiday on the sea. I tried having a different class of boat, theoretically better suited to the home club's water, to sail at home but I didn't get on with it so accepted the compromise of racing the Blaze at home. Class racing in single handers is available within striking distance of my home for L@sers, Solos, Supernovas and IC (barely) but only the Lasers and the Solos offering a choice of clubs and only the Lasers get double figurer turnouts.

...what banding are you putting into "high-performance"?

I fully buy into the banded handicap thing, but there are also a bunch of racers who are probably looking for one design racing, and to throw a whole bunch of classes into some kind of level rating class would probably send these sailors to another club that offers one design racing, or onto the open meeting circuit.  

Whilst an Enterprise, National 12, Laser Radial all may operate within a tight band, you cannot get away from the fact that these boats perform better or worse in different wind strengths and points of sailing, so becomes very course dependent.

We had 16 Solos doing our club race on Saturday, the success of the class may be serendipity, but I suspect few of those sailors would turn up if handicap racing was the only option.

Maybe some people, who previously sailed a certain a class in a few opens and the nationals, and saw the club racing as subservient to that, will choose a boat to get boat-on-boat racing at their home club? Once you admit you're not going to the 470 nationals next year, it gets tempting to make the best of racing against Kev with his 505, so you buy a 505.

But I think the premise of this thread is flawed, nationals turnouts are not too bad considering the state we were in until Putin threw covid off the front page. Opens are a mess, everyone's plans are a mess as we catch up two years.

But I do wonder if the open scene for small classes will ever bounce back . 

Originally posted by davidyacht We had 16 Solos doing our club race on Saturday, the success of the class may be serendipity, but I suspect few of those sailors would turn up if handicap racing was the only option.

Isn't that just because: (Randomness of PY) X (Randomness of Salcombe) = far too much for the human mind to cope with...?

What percentage of the total SYC Solo fleet was that turnout?

Originally posted by davidyacht ..operate within a tight band, you cannot get away from the fact that these boats perform better or worse in different wind strengths and points of sailing, so becomes very course dependent.

Which is also a good description of the level rating classes that were regarded as the high point of big boat racing? Seemed to make quite a lot of people happy at that time? Trouble with strict OD singlehanders is that body size counts for a lot, at least in doublehanders it is possible to accommodate a much wider range

The other trouble with being too prescriptive is it makes it harder to manage or facilitate change when it may be needed. Combining a 2-4 boat slow handicap fleet and a 2-4 boat Laser 'fleet' (ie the odd situation where Laser's get special treatment, even though they are essentially a handicap fleet sailing with a mix or rigs) at my old club seems to have lead to better turnouts for the Lasers and the growth of a de facto Solo fleet, while also catering for a number of other singlehanders and the odd doublehander.

There was a bit of grumbling from the lasers when it was first changed, but it seems to have survived 5-6 years in that format and it would be interesting to know how much appetite there would be to change it back? My guess is not a lot as a regular turnout of 10 'similar enough' boats probably gives a better race than a 2 identical boats who have helms of massively different ability.

Around 40%, but a fair number of our fleet are second home owners.  As I said, I suspect an element of our success (we have had turnouts in excess of 20 this year) is serendipity.  But it also has something to do with a “band of brothers” vibe, and a regular hard core turn out of ten or so week in week out.

My point is not that banded handicapping is a bad thing.  Just that there is a hardcore that may prefer boat on boat racing of a one design nature.

I would also suggest that it is harder to engender an “esprit de coer” in a fleet of disparate classes than in one class, for all sorts of reasons.

Salcombe … random? Never! (Tongue in cheek reed this week’s report)