>>Just put the Olympic side show in a box and set it aside.<<

I'm with you 100% on that Mark. I also agree that the individual boat manufacturers should do more to bring in new people off the street, vs. trying to swap one boat for another.

We differ in what we want US Sailing to do for the members.

I think they already do a very good job of supporting racing sailors with all their RC schools, Judges schools, etc. I have no idea what all the PHRF bitching is about as I left that world back in about 1983 when I bought a J24 and started racing one-design, but maybe that should be addressed as well.

I think part of US Sailing should be to come up with a way to expose new people to sailing. People who live near the water but have never been out on a sailboat. People who might want to learn but can't afford to join a traditional YC, or have busy schedules that don't allow a daily sailing class for a week or two straight. Right now the only way a person can learn without joining a YC is to join a Community Sailing Center, which are a great way, no doubt, but I would like to see more of them around the country.

We bitch about low turnouts at regattas, well, how do we bring in more people? "Go join a YC" is not the answer in my opinion. The RYA has centers all over England where any person can walk up and rent a Laser Pico, or Windsurfer, for about $30, and they have instructors on site, ready to go.

Something like this is what I am talking about doing here. These are not huge, big money operations, just a few boats and a storage shed with a couple instructors (teenagers, summer job type stuff) there to get the newbies started.

Maybe US Sailing should have nothing to do with it, but certainly there should be some national teaching and lesson standards, so a newbie could go to any of these sites and say, "Here's my card, as you can see, I have completed lessons 1-4, I would now like to lean spinnaker work in lesson 5." Put him/her in a boat, and off you go. I really think some sailing centers make it too hard for any new people to get in. Unless you join THEIR center, they won't talk to you. This is where US Sailing could set some guidelines.

22 years ago I got a flight attendant into sailing at the Boston Community Sailing Center. We just walked in, talked to the guy behind the counter for a while, explained that she lived in Boston and was looking to learn to sail. He said, "Well, we offer lessons on Tuesday and Thursday nights, can you come back then?" I said no, we will be gone by then. He said, "Well I don't have any istructors available right now." I said, "I know how to sail, and I can take her out if you will rent me a boat." He gave me a short written test to take, asked me some boat handling type questions and then rented us a boat. We had a great time and she did come back and join for the whole summer program. But if he had not rented us the boat, I doubt if she ever would have come back.

But that's Boston, a big time sailing oriented area with a really good community sailing center. If we had 1,000 more just like that we wouldn't be having this discussion.