Wayne, My theory... having watched the F17 US fleet do the same thing as your Dachet fleet.. not to mention a few A class fleets melt away....

There is nothing social about racing single handed... It is all about you and making your boat go... and then sailing against your competitors on the course. It tends to be a dick forest on the beach as well. The only shared experience of the sailors is often the racing on the course... 10 boats is still 10 guys hanging at the keg. That gets old as well.

The long term successful fleets tend to have a goal that the class members are working toward. EG... success at the Continentals or Worlds or at the big club regatta on Labor Day... whatever... Without a personal goal that is also shared by enough of your buddies... you are basically just sailing in circles and then they confirm the local pecking order at the end of the racing weekend with the score sheet. After a few regattas... the pecking order is now set in stone and now the question becomes... how do I move up? why is this fun?

The answer of course is a mix of practice, knowledge, talent and hardware and the match of you and your boat to local racing scene. (Money and time are important as well but not much point discussing these issues) When you get a group of diverse individuals working towards something who also want to have fun... it all hangs together.

So... for single handed sailors...
Practicing is lonely.... Unless you find tuning partners aiming for the same goal... Practicing get's old and rather quickly too.

Knowledge... Sailing single handed is the ultimate school of hard knocks way of learning how to race boats. You have to see Sail shape that is correct and it changes with time as the sail stretches.. You have to learn how to recognize the significant shifts. Half the time... you have no idea what happened and that is either frustrating (you will quit soon) or challenging (you will work at it) Bottom line... it's a tough game to learn on your own.

Talent, Well, God deals this out. Still, a great deal of fun can be had with ordinary talent.

Hardware, well for obvious reasons.... hardware becomes the easy solution... more and better will certainly keep life interesting for a little bit of time....

The match... If the fleet sails Hobie 16's and you have a NF20... The 5 laps around the short course for you will not be fun.

If your club thinks that 4 and 1/2 hours of racing in 12 to 15 is the standard of fun.... Your 50 year old butt will be out of gas after two, maybe three races... and it will be no fun for races 3 and 4.... The match is important. Wayne mentions SCHRS ratings..... And this is another match issue.... if the F18's are easy to sail to their rating and your F16uni is 40% more difficult, Your twin on the F18 will win by a mile...but that is the weekend racing scene so this is not a good match. (Now, If your goal was to do well at the Continentals.... well you could use the weekend regattas as just the practice needed to get to the Big event...)

So... I think that a single handed fleet needs real buy in...of each individual and the group to a set of racing goals.. no matter how modest... Equally important... you need to have a shared commitment for everyone to be learning more about sailboat racing your single hander.... IE. Tuning partner, Debriefs, Clinics, Coaching.

When you half butt these foundations... the fleet melts way. The pecking order is set in stone... the fun factor drops and the reasons to show up decrease.

The same core discussion was just on a SA thread on the A class. Itaxx suggested that A Class Development was a problem....just as Wayne suggests SCHRS ratings are a problem. GBR made the counter argument to Ita for development in the A class.

A final observation unique to A class is that the A class tends to attract very accomplished sailors who can hop on a boat and ratchet to the top of the pecking order in short order... They already have enough knowledge and talent to play the game... An average sailor from a less technical class will hop in not understanding the class culture and the nature of RACING single handed and he will be looking at a mountain of knowledge to acquire and little obvious way to get it.

The 505 class understands these dynamics and so they are really strong on getting you to play the 505 game... and if you burn out or loose interest... SELL YOUR BOAT pronto to somebody who wants to play

The Soling class tells new sailors... It will take you 10 years to get up to speed with the old guard... BUT they will be with you every step of the way.

Single handed classes are a real challenge because you just can't get GAsby to hop on your boat and show you what to look at or do.

As always... Your mileage may vary.