I feel strongly that "another class" will have nothing to do with generating sailing interest. I can drive around withing 5 miles of my house and count 40+ cats sitting in yards etc. There are pleanty of boats - low cost boats out there such that no one can effectively use the cost excuse for not sailing. The key is to create events that people want to come to.

A lot of events have digressed to be purely about the racing as the more hard core racers are whats left in a lot of fleets and the fleets are the only ones putting on events. There is not much incentive for a new person to go to an event that is totaly if not mostly race oriented when they have to compete against people with 20+ years of racing under their belt. And it does not matter if they are on Waves or the latest carbon 20, they are going to be way at the back. Not many people are willing to endure that kind of learning curve without some other reason the attend.

As for setting 1 design... The laser and 49er have a design that is liscenced to several builders and the Tornado was an open design that anyone could build. The problem here is that if you wnated a "race" boat they all gravited to a single source. This kills the motivation of the other builders and effectively locks you back into a SMOD and for a global class that is very difficult as remote support becomes a challenge.

I build boats and from a manufacturers standpoint the formula concept sucks but given the nature of the sport at this time it is reallly the only viable alternative. From a saiors point of view I think it is an excellent concept.