Okay, Bob, I have figured it out now: Your post about my needing medication and something about roads and brakes should have been in this thread so people, including me, would know what you were talking about. (Note: Bob's post above is in response to the fact that in the "Mary medication" post I had asked him what he was talking about. See that thread in order to understand his post above.)

Apparently, because I said I was voting in the poll that cash prizes are bad, you thought I had an opinion on the subject. That is not the case. I had to vote "bad" only because the question is so general and open-ended, and I thought it was better to err on the side of maintaining the status quo until more information is available about the pros and cons. When you open a can of money, there might be worms in there, too. I think that is why so few people have voted in the poll. And that was the purpose of asking people to express their opinions in this thread.

There are so many questions and so many different potential situations.....
Is money okay in a few, specific, major events like the Worrell 1000? Or should all regattas be able to offer cash prizes?

Is there a difference in the palatability of having cash prizes when the money is being provided by a major sponsor, as opposed to the sailors themselves putting their own money into a pot to be divided up?

What about the "professionalism" issue? Should sailing be divided into two camps -- the professionals, with their own "tour" of regattas, and the amateurs with their tournaments and leagues? That is how it works in golf, tennis, bowling; but is that feasible for sailing? We don't have enough sailors to have such a division. And we can't get spectator money and television money to pay for the cash prizes. Sponsors are hard to find. So that leaves the main option being for the sailors themselves to provide the prize money.

Will sailors who go to a lot of regattas every season be willing to pay an additional $20 or whatever in their entry fee in order to have cash prizes? Or do they want to give up T-shirts, trophies and beer so that money can go toward cash prizes?

Or could we have one or more optional "professional" classes available to sailors at every regatta?

And how deep into the finish positions do you go with the cash?

And if the same people are winning all the money all the time, are they going to start feeling bad about it and stop racing because they don't want to keep taking their friends' money?

This is not a cut-and-dried, good-and-bad issue. There are just so many ramifications, some of which have been addressed already in this thread.