Hey Caleb,

I replied to this thread to see if we can make it spread, and/or to see if there's truly a change of heart of USSA in regard to multihulls at the JO and Olympic level.

What Harry and Mark (and others) have accomplished here is truly remarkable.

Of course, what your group has done in the northwest is equally truly remarkable. I think that has great promise in terms of helping spread cats into JOs nationwide: you have an established youth cat scene out there, the rest of us are "just" trying to piece together events. Since you have a program (and presumably the youth sailors), it should be easier for your area to accept adding cats to the JO, especially now that Rock Hall has shown that it can be done.

As I (and others) have said, what makes the dinghies successful are the programs, not specific events. To be a success in the long run, we need to get programs up and running all over the place.

So, to answer your question, to sustainably increase attendance at a championship, you need a program to feed it. To pump it up it for a single iteration, you first need to talk to the customers: the youth sailors and their parents. Find out what they want, what their obstacles are, and work to deliver on that. There have been other major youth cat championships, can't hurt to contact some of those sailors and see what they have to say as well.

I have no doubt that this event will be a great success, and am really looking forward to helping it spread.

BTW, by "lessons learned" I was referring to overall organizational issues, that would need to be considered when trying to get the foot in the door elsewhere. The more organized we can be with our presentation, the better.

Mike