Mark

Mike's point about handicap racing is spot on.

The most important objective is to find a race structure that keeps the last guy racing... when he quits... you have a new last guy.

When your region chooses to run 2 and 4 boat one design fleets versus a single larger fleet scored on portsmouth (Plus one design) this simply means that you have LOTS of last place sailors that you have to work on to keep their interest up.
This is very tough to do especially when the OD class has lots of talent and the good guys are miles ahead of you.

When you have more sailors competing... odds are that you have a group of sailors with about the same skill level... even though they are in different classes. Likewise... the top sailors will be able to race each other and still find a competitive challenge.

On the chesapeake... we have killed off all of the deadboats that used to live in portsmouth and attempted to form three one design fleets plus the three long standing Hobie fleets 16, 17 and 18). Like you, the deadboat guys did not want to chase the new hot class with lots of money. Unlike you... they have just retired... Worse, The dream of a couple of the one design fleets up here is faltering. They managed a few years of 5 or more boats on the line for a few events... but this turnout did not get more dead boat society sailors to join the fleet and grow the one design class. Holding together a small OD fleet is proving impossible.

Seems to me that in a 20 boat regatta... If you get at least 1/2 the boats in One design class terrific... otherwise... split the fleet into high and low and overall and keep everyone involved racing on handicap.

I have switched from supporting Portsmouth to SCHRS simply because of the problems in the recent past and the difficulty in maintaing portsmouth going forward.