From what I can tell, the Worrell never had more than 20 participants. It seems to me that you don't need to gauge interest from the sailors, if you put it on, they will come. However, without sponsors the whole thing dies.
Yeah, but even this is a little different than the Worrell. The Worrell was very structured with stops, layovers, starts (including evening starts for night legs), etc. It was setup this way so media could follow it.
Sponsorship is a whole 'nother animal too. Let's face it, the Worrell, Tybee, etc., never really got THAT much out of sponsorship (and this race appears to be reducing the management costs so that it shouldn't be an issue). People drove these races to happen and found ways to barely make ends meet. Team sponsorships have never amounted to an incredible amount either - most teams pay 80 to 90% of their own expenses out of pocket anyway even with the appearance of a big sponsor.
This race sounds like a different animal and would be hard to compare against the Worrell...it's closer to the structure of the WaterTribe events (Everglades challenge) but without specific checkpoints while providing the ability to switch crew. You have the option to sail it how you want to sail it - take your time, create your own check points, or full out sail through every night and try to get there first.
My own personal delima is about how our team would approach the race and this plays into whether or not I would want to do it. Within our class, there's probably not much chance I can keep pace with the leaders in endurance and my time to prepare/train is at an all-time low for the time being. Outside of our class, there's little chance an F18 could win it. With winning out of the picture, I have to ignore the fact that there is prize money and find our own approach, and motivation, to do the race. Do we take it low and slow, take our time, and get there over the course of two weeks for the sake of sailing the distance (bucket list), or do we see how hard we can push ourselves and see who we can beat along the way? The possibility for a lot of night sailing factors in there too.
I guess one of my concerns is that it's possible I don't see another boat, or team, along the entire distance.
Perhaps it's possible to break the distance with one or two checkpoints that require boats that arrive between midnight to midnight to restart together the next morning at 10am the next morning with starts for several days...or, perhaps, takeaway some structure from the Archipeligo Raid...
Team Seacats is a prospect for the race and are interested to see how it would be structured.
