Brilliant.. These guys know what they are doing..
Registration is one of those activities in life that people go nuts over... both sides of the equation... the club and the sailors. (See Registration chaos at last minute for ACA or any other time in rlife to register for something)
Organizers are reluctant to require the commitment, deadlines, penalties, late fees, no dinner for you etc.. .... Sailors hold back ....because.. (something better will come along… or... ITS a MISTAKE!!! However...
REGISTRATION makes that future happen... the organizers are pumped up when a big fleet is REALLY committed and REGISTERED in coming racing... They want to do a great job.. When a sailor has thrown their hat in the ring... they have signed up.. and Paid with their check or credit card... Life then happens to make their attendance happen in reality. That is just the way it works! Wickfords pre registration policy has integrity.
It is half assed to have a sign up sheet on the web without requiring the financial commitment. (Yes.. its better then nothing… but you need both sides of the equation.) Spring Fever does not require pre payment... and that delivers a certain message.... Sorry, It is just the way humans work.... The promise of swag so long as you sign up... is NOT the same as REGISTRATION with integrity
The constant communication between the OA/YC and the fleet captains... and the fleet captains with the sailors is key...
Again... in a perfect world... you may not need this constant communication... but.. people are people. Spring Fever does things their way and it can bite you in the butt.
We've been talking about that some among a few folks and I'm considering setting up an event registration service through the EMSA website for our official regattas. The debate is to request payment with registration or not. I poked around with Mr. Ernie about it for Spring Fever and he was not very receptive (I didn't have a chance to dig much deeper but he has a lot of family health issues in front of him at the time being).
I remember that we used to require pre-registration at our events (even if it was a soft requirement) and I had to mail a stupid check and put a stamp on it. I eventually quit doing that and was willing to pay the extra $5 or whatever to avoid the hassle (I realize this is selfish, but I have both a day job and a rather active home business). The web can make it easy and, shoot, if we centralize it in our region, I could just go pre-register for all the events I know I'm going to attend in one sitting.
I suppose the question I have is does anyone think that the requirement for money up front will act as a deterrent to anyone? I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a newbie sailor. Personally, I don't think it would have an effect (we're also weighing options to not charge registration fees to relatively new sailors).
