When the Hobie Hotline was still in business, the editor said the ratio of non-racers to racers was 2 to 1, as far as the readers of the magazine.

In the case of readers of my magazine, Catamaran Sailor, I would say the ratio is reversed -- about 2 to 1 racers to non-racers.

But neither of those statistics are particularly helpful, because it is hard to say whether the content of the magazines is determined by the readership or whether the readership is determined by the type of content in the magazines.

And taking a poll of the readers of a particular magazine or users on a forum doesn't tell us anything, either, because we are only reaching the people who are interested enough to want to be connected and to interact. That tends to be people who race, or at least care enough to want to improve their boat and/or their boat's performance.

It is very hard to make contact with most of the non-racers out there, because they are out of the loop. They don't belong to a fleet or a club and don't even know, or care, what other cat sailors are doing. It's hard to find what may be the invisible majority of cat sailors. Every time I see a cat on a trailer heading up or down the road in the Keys, I have an urge to follow them and pull them over to the side of the road and interrogate them. I don't, of course...I just go on wondering how many of them there are and where they go and how often they sail.

As far as whether more race-oriented boat designs have alienated the public, I really don't see why that would be the case. In fact, I think it would be the opposite. There are a zillion used boat models out there on the market for very good prices. There's a boat for every need.

The missing link is the brilliant marketing that was done by Hobie Alter back in the early 1970's that made a hundred thousand people want a Hobie 16. It was a novelty, like pet rocks. And most of those boats ended up up like a rock, sitting in a back yard. I can't drive down a street in the Keys without seeing a Hobie 16 sitting in somebody's yard. NONE of them are sailed.

So when you ask how many OWNERS actually race their boats, the real question is "How many owners actually SAIL their boats at all?" I would say that is a very tiny percentage. And of the beach-cat owners who sail, the number who race? No way to answer that question without having census takers at every beach, ramp, fleet and club in the country.

Just guessing, I would say that there there are less than 1,000 active racers in the U.S. And my most optimistic estimate would be that maybe there are another 1,000 that race occasionally.

Sorry, I can't go on....my version of "optimistic" is making me cry.