Arresting the Decline and Fall of our Sport.

only if you can't use your own council's planning department to change the land use and allow a big 'ol block of "luxury" appartments to be built, or are car parks more lucrative than yuppy flats in Brexit times?

The real problem is time. It has shrunk for most people during my lifetime and in inverse proportion to the demands on it. Dinghy sailing doesn't really exist outside of racing - that's what almost all classes are designed and built for - and that demands regular attendance at a specific location at a specific time. When I was young and stupid that was relatively easy to manage as there were many fewer things to do and time management for most was a predictive process. Now that I'm just stupid it seems that life moves so much faster with time demands from so many different directions that people's reactions are purely reactive; planning one's time is harder, demands much more discipline and even then one is much less successful. One has to be pretty single-minded to remain committed to one or two activities and that's a trait that seems to exist mostly in the older generations - and that at least in part explains the ageing membership of so many sports clubs of all descriptions.