Yacht clubs have had junior programs for at least 50 years ...sailing monohulls... These programs are run by adults for kids over summers during the work week.... July to August.

Hobie Cat has been one of the largest one design classes in the world for 40 years... For many years they have sponsored the only junior cat sailing program in the USA by hosting a few regattas or NA's on weekends. Primarily... the Hobie way of life is family oriented with parents sailing with their kids and this is our defacto junior program.

So... which program has generated more sailors?

I am shocked/surprised at how few current mulithull sailors came from the "sailed with my dad? training program. Something was missing!

We need to change our strategy. A cats, F18's are simply not the platform to get juniors out racing. The Hobie 16 is the boat for the USA right now.... maybe you can step up to an F16 down the road... but there are more issues around F16's then Hobie 16's for this purpose.

While it would be fantastic for Yacht Club junior programs to add a mulithull high performance program to their offerings... I suspect hell freezing over has a better shot.

So we do what we can... in the mid Atlantic region Hobie Div 11 has a very strong and active H16 fleet AND A NUMBER OF JUNIOR SAILORS. Our view is that we try to get these juniors who usually race against the adults to be more like the Yacht club world and participate in a Junior regatta strictly against other juniors. We are trying to leverage our very small window of opportunity (kids get older...procreation is slow... not to mention expensive) by trying to put together a junior regatta with the Hobie 16 junior racers joined by some juniors from Yacht clubs. The goal is to achieve a critical mass of juniors for a good regatta and generate interest among the junior racers from yacht clubs for high performance mulithull racing.

With the America's Cup action on high performance cats ready to take off in San Fransisco... I believe it's now or never!

Thanks to the Div 11 sailors who work to make loaner boats available... we have the opportunity. Last year we held a Junior Olympics at Rock Hall.... This year we are hoping to participate in the Barnegat Bay JO's... Our intention is to invite some Yacht Club Juniors from Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake Bay region to take the opportunity and go Hobie 16 racing. I should emphasize... This kind of thing is ONLY POSSIBLE because the Div 11 16 sailors have been very generous with loaning their boats and time.

Every region should look for an opportunity in their neck of the woods and step up to the plate.

The alternative will be to wait for more guys like TEH who stumble onto cats, get hooked and learn to sailboat race.
I think if you surveyed the big boat crews... you would be stunned at how few of these sailors have any experience in a dinghy beyond a 420... years and years ago. Still these are sailors who go racing... getting them onto a beach cat is much much easier then trying to get a newbie or a recreational sailor to go racing!