Hi John,

Your replies in red, mine in black:

[color:red]On your suggestion regarding the Alter Cup - that's a sore point with me as well, but I'd like some more info from your perspective. Please clarify what you mean by the regatta being damaged. Do you feel there are too many participants? How would you feel about the same number of participants, but MORE areas (e.g., 12-15 areas sending teams rather than the current 10)? Keep in mind that US Sailing does not currently recognize the Alter Cup as a Championship due to the three petition positions. One of my personal goals is to see that the Cup gets full Championship status back.

As a brief history this was a fine event and pitted the top teams from the ten areas. And boat manufacturers were kind enough to supply 10 boats for the competition. The ten boats were sailed in a round-robin format so that no one was stuck with a "bad" boat.

Simply put: if you won your area, you went to the Alter Cup and there met the winners from the other nine areas. I was lucky enough to eke out a win from my area and was present for the very first one at Tom's River, NJ (won by Carlton Tucker, I might add).

By the way, this is the way all US Sailing Championships are run.

But there was a faction in the multihulls that decided we are much smarter and had much better ideas than what tradition and experience have given us and petitioned to get all the top guns from all the top classes to be there. They would have liked to eliminate the 10 area teams, but could not get that pushed through.

Forgive my digression, but their reasoning was that there were more rock star sailors in California than anywhere else and why should they only be able to send one of their very best. They voiced the opinion that why should unknown sailors from Iowa, Connecticut, Ohio or North Carolina be there when such great as Hobie, Jr., Alan Egusa, et al sit at home?

Now, I see in another post of this thread that some feel the same way about the Florida area and our overflow of great sailors.

None of that made any sense to me then, nor does it now. Each area simply sends their very best team.., and that is it. That way you have the entire country represented in a National Championship. Each sending their best. Sure, there may be some rock stars from Florida that may not get to go, but that would be because they lost to the guy that is going.

So, now they needed 20 boats but no boat manufacturer was about to put up that many boats. The answer was to devise this logistical calculation that somehow put all the sailors on all the boats some of the time. While it was a very clever way to handle 20 teams, it could only be done with exactly 20 teams.

Quite often there would be champs from not well known classes that were totally ignored (i.e., Shark, Isotope, some Nacras, et al) and in order to fill the 20 team spots they quietly asked for petitions to sail in those spots.

In one of the first of these events I went by petition although I had not won a decent race all year and did not deserve to go. But I wanted to test the water. Then just before the Alter Cup they were still short three positions. They started calling around to their local sailors to see who wanted to be in the Alter Cup at the last moment. They had sailors brought in right off the beach.

This did not make a Championship in my mind. Guess that was what I meant by it being damaged.

And now the thing has developed to a point there are two fleets.

I would propose we go back to the original format.

For those that think the teams should all be rock stars, fine! Have an invitational regatta following the Alter Cup or just before it that brings ten National Champions to the table. While we are at it have the same boats used for a Women's Championship and then a Junior Championship, and perhaps even a Masters..



[color:red]Regarding ratings - are you referring to boat or crew weight? What, in your opinion, makes the rating unuseable by not having one or both specified by Portsmouth or by Class Association? Can you give me an example - I think I'm missing your point...

Once we had modifications if you sailed a two-person boat single handed, and if you sailed a single-handed boat with two. That is no longer in the modifications.

It seems they took that Fat Boy thing and combined it with the two person, one person thing and ended up with percentages of the minimum weight.

That might be fine for boats with minimum weights, but there are lots of good classes that do not have minimum weights.

For example, I sailed my Taipan 4.9 Uni which I normally sail by myself in the Key Largo Steeplechase. However, the SI's do not allow for single-handing that race, so I had a petite lady sail with me. But there was no way to change the rating under the present modifications.

Thanks,

Rick