I think we need to be different, an example of not to do it.


Sorry Hobie corp and sailors I'm using you as an example this time. HOWEVER similar examples can be given about Nacra and Spitfire classes. So I underline that I'm trying to show a general problem here :

Hobie worlds championship in Melbourne AUS

Participation (having at least raced 1 race) :

Hobie 17 World championship : 16 boats of which 2 US sailors and 14 Aus sailors.

Hobie 18 World championship : 28 boats of which 1 NZL and 1 US crews and 26 Aus boats.

Now good participation, don't get me wrong, but only for a national championship at the most. If anybody submits this to a sailing magazine or newspaper we'll get laughted of the pages. These aren't world championships in the way the public views them ! These are local races with 1 or 2 foreign crews on probably as many charter boats. We need to cut this crap if we want to be taken seriously or make sure that at least 5 continents are represented with the foreigners making up AT LEAST halve the fleet. Otherwise we will be doing ourselfs a favour by changing the name from "Worlds" to "Open nationals". I disagree with ISAF on many things but at least they protect the identifier "Worlds" so that it is only used for true world scale events. I fail to understand why the ISAF is not acting on the ISAF recognised classes like these two.

Extra info :

Hobie 16 : There are 25 crews racing in the Hobie 16 class devided over 3 fleets : 8 boats , 5 boats, 5 boats and 7 boats. Again I'm not counting the crew that haven't sailed at least 1 race out of 8. For all we know these could be imaginairy baots that never travelled to the venue.

Hobie tiger class : 19 boats

One simple question which class is the one you want to be in with respect to competition and numbers ? I venture it in other Hobie 18/Tiger and then H16 on 3rd. Just to show how strong the H16 class is even in Australia. I'll sure be accused of Hobie bashing but what I'm trying to show here how the numbers support the retoric. The point is that we need to be very careful with retoric like this as 85 % of the readers see right through it and will be laughing at us. Lets face it guys a 49-er world championship sees over 15 nations competiting and so too 29-er and splash world championships. We need to take care that we live up to expectations in real life and not just talk our way to it.

You can flame me all you want now, I know what I know and flaming is not going to chance the numbers on events I have provided over the last year (remember the Europeans and EU Nationals data I provided a few months back ?)

Wouter








Hobie 17's and Hobie 18's