he ISAF message about Olympic classes affects other High Performance sailing classes in addition to the catamran classes.

I just returned from my region’s Junior Sailing Organizational meeting. 30 individuals representing their clubs, and other organizations were committed to making a full program of Opti, Laser and 420 racing PLUS a 3 boat junior big boat racing program happen. I am impressed by their ongoing commitment to keeping a junior sailing program going.

A huge AHA for me was the support for High School Varsity Sailing . Amazingly, we have local High schools with 35 kids on the sailing team (JV and Varsity)..

My goal was to develop a high performance program with Annapolis Yacht Club and their potentially new 29ner fleet. They think it’s a great idea but can’t commit to anything right now… Why?? Turns out they are having second thoughts about pushing the high performance ball. The lack of interest in a women’s high performance dinghy and the difficulty of even a deep pocket club with a fantastic facility to make this happen over the next few years is causing them to rethink.

Our type of sailing was called elitist… by the people trying to make it work! The word elite was used in the positive sense… eg… the best sailors are the ones going into 29ners and cats.

Wow… this is a challenge!