This format exists across the US and is hosted by many weekend regattas already.
If you're asking if I would attend a DPN/SCHRS championship with a $50 a head upcharge instead of my fleets national championship the answer is no. However, if the event was SCHRS and I had access to a Viper (104) and the event was in my backyard I'd consider it.
Exactly!
In order to attract 250 sailors in the US the radius of travel gets pretty large. There has to be an extrodinarily good reason for everyone to want to attend.
At Carnac they have a lot of sailors within a resonable drive (especialy by US standards of distance) The F18 class has made it their tuning and early season shake down as DUH points out. The rest are playing a huge game of handicap racing. Sweetheart rating for certain designs and all the politics/bs of handicap sailing you can find permeating this whole forum.
If I still was racing the only way I would consider this would be to attend a race to practice big fleet starts and they had better have a huge party. As a championship level event - no way. For this kind of event I would have been very unlikely willing to travel more than 6-8 hrs even back when gas was cheep.
There are 2 big open races in the South now (Tradewinds and Spring Fever) Long way from 250 at either of these. Both were down in attendance this year but you can see from the results that the F classes were not. The fall out in attendance came from the handicap guys. This kind of shouts that pulling a big handcap open event will have a hard time flying.
