For youth sailing as defined by the national associations its days are numbered and we all agree to some extend that it doesn't pass the Pepsi test with todays youngsters and teenagers.
The Hobie 16 youth class is a different entity in its own right and sadly unrelated to anything the national organisations find interesting. Without these being involved the colleges will never offer scholarships as there is no high profile ending (return of investment) for their efforts. It is common knolegde that companies will fund F18 and Tornado campaigns (after much convincing) but not any Hobie 16 teams.
The Hobie 16 youth class is fully geared towards keeping the sailors in the Hobie 16 class. This is their right but also contradictionary to growing and supporting the larger cat sailing scene or national sailing association programs for cats. As such it will not keep any multihull in the Olympic program and it will only garantee that the larger cat scene is starved of fresh blood as the H16 class will most definately try to corner it. I hate the say it but I've not found the Hobie 16 class to be much of a team player. Sorry.
Wouter
Sorry to disagree Wouter, but our youth teams for the US SAILING Youth Championship were trained on both the Hobie 16 and the Tiger. The Tiger was used for the spin training. The Hobie 16 youth are now also sailing on the Tigers, mostly as crew, but and will eventually be skippers on Tigers and/or FX-1's. What better way to advance to the F-18 classes and hopefully to the Olympic Multihull class, no matter what it may be. In the Northwest, we do have a good record of Olympic sailing athletes. Why not add a Multihull sailor to this group?
