I agree with Mark here.

I voted Pn racing as the way to grow my participation in my neck of the woods and we have a sizable F18 presence here that easily makes the cut-off of 10 boats.

I too would love all to buy F16's so that I can race class but is just not realistic and to be honest this attitude would also be a bit arrogant and egoistic.

With Mark I believe that participation is revived with new cat sailors and not be zero sum class games and certainly not by calling new sailors in the PN class "nothing more than obstacles on the course"

fact of the matter is that new sailors buy what they can get for a decent prices and this is often a cat out of the dead class society. Without catering for them in a PN way and concentration on making this class fun we will never grow these sailors into to the more expensive one-design or formula classes. That is reality.

The worst you can do is to make the PN fleet a waste basket of unwanted sailors where a tornado is forced to race a H14 only because he isn't allowed to measure himself against 5 boats of a certain 18 and 20 foot length.

I think alot of organiser have it wrong. The event should be PN by default and only do a one-design/formula start when this class organises the event themselfs (nationals etc) or when they really have a number worth considering a seperate start for. The Number 5 is NOT that number. 10 comes closer;

Sadly to focus is now on getting 5 boats on the beach (not even on the water) and the shoove everybody who was not lucky enought to choose the rigth class (who determines this ?) into the "oohh yeah, we got that crap of everything class too that we have to start"


Wouter