Well, I would toss the inaugural event for the purpose of setting a trend line.. Nigel created the event and encouraged everyone to join their National Class association...He had a foot in both Hobie world an Performance world... plus a Tornado background. The politics at that time was dynamic and Nigel was a breath of fresh air. He got huge support as you can see. So what I see was steady participation with 80 pre registered and roughly 90 of so boats on the water year after year. I think the spike in 08 was the first F18 Southern Championship...I showed up that year expecting the previous format.... Oops. So, Pre Registration returns to the 80 ish level for a couple of years.

I would conclude that the two year PN experiment did not hurt participation in any way.

I would look at turnouts at the midwinter major east coast events and see what correlates with the last few years of decline. If its just overall drop in participation ... then some triage would be called for..... I am not sure triage would have killed off Spring Fever as the first event to go!