Looking over some of the data, for example that 29-er fully rigged with spi and all costs ONLY 8750 Euro's, I must say that the cat sailors and their organisations are not playing their game right. Afterall the SL16 (youth boat for cats) costs 13.000 Euro's. I can understand where RYS is coming from when the first 29-er worlds is said to have had 65 crews participating, with 100 crews now. The cat youth classes don't pull that much participation, they're not even close.

This brings us back to the problem of youth sailors in cat classes. Although this problem is compounded by the fact that the 29-er is not really a youth class (as the SL16 is) even though the RYA still sees it that way. They could also have quoted the H16 worlds numbers of over 250 crew participating, among which undoutable a large number of very young people.

They feel no real youth path towards Olympic multihulls (i.e. the Tornado) exists and they are arguable right about that. A Hobie 16 simply does not compare in any way to the olympic Tornado. Actually a crew coming of the 29-er is not expected to find more difficulty in mastering a Tornado then a youth team coming of the Hobie 16. That is not far of the truth.

So how to solve this ?

I have my personal opinions, which do revolve around getting them on well looking and performing cats early on like when they are 12. But what do others think and more important how do we actually get something implemented in real life ! We can argue till we are blue in the face that cats must become alot cheaper then they are now but how do we actually achieve that ?

Wouter