... a boat as cool as this will catch on ...
Well yeah, the F16's proved as much.
But the real point I want to make here is :
I think that it has been lying dormant for so long just because nobody wants to be first. Even in my division there are at least two people that will be making an FXone their next boat
I also believe that it has now an uphill struggle to fight against the I-17's (F17's) and F16's. Mostly the latter. This should not be underestimated. It is not like the FX-one is the "first boat" into this segment of the catamaran scene/market. It certain is not the most succesful one to date. People will brush off my next comment as biased, but to me it even appears that the European FX-one class/numbers is in decline. Their European championships at Cangas (Spain) a few years ago seems to be have been their high point. It think Matt Miller provided the attendence numbers for these European Championships in the thread about this on the hobie forums.
Another issue with this boat is that at the moment there isn't a large number of used boats available. It's tough to justify buying a brand new boat when there isn't anyone to race with, but once a few people start picking them up and more and more used boats become available this will become a thing of the past.
I can comment on this as I've "done it", but launching a design and class is an increadibally large amount of work and invested time. During this phase I also found that the secondhand market issue and small fleet sizes are things that stay "issues" till much after the class has reached critical mass on other accounts. You can't dependent on solving these to suddenly grow the class to critical mass. It is the other way around you have to grow the class the critical mass on other points in order to solve these issues. One explanation is that people always want cheaper second hand boats, this basically means that they have to be 5 years of age or older and still look well. Somehow you have to cover those 5 years and keep the miniscule class alive during that time without any real second hand offers or large regatta attendences.
You have to be able to get the first few people who pick these boats up to be really active and visible in sailing these. It is a dirty rotten job but somebody has to make that happen time and time again. Just saying :"hey, ..." over beer usually won't do it.
You guys got a long way to go and just announcing to hold a US nationals hoping all 5 widely spread out boats present in the US will come, simply won't do it.
I remember we had that many boats in Florida alone once and how much work it was to get them all to attend any local regatta at the same time.
You have got to learn to crawl before you can learn to walk and you have to learn how to walk before you can learn to run. It is a long proces and it is my opinion that you are started at the wrong end of this process (learning to run)
Wouter
