Mary,
Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed? John is awesome, I applaud his efforts.
The point that I was getting at is that we never had to "organize" anything, it just happened naturally. Everyone brought their own coolers and grills, we set up shade and chairs, we sailed all day long, in and out taking different people and making freinds. There was no need to organize it, it just happened, every weekend. Before anybody flames me let me say that I am just pointing out MY PERCEPTION of the differences between "now" and the "past".
The other point I was attempting to make was that I don't think that people get into sailing to start racing, I think the recreation and leisure sailors create a pool from which the racers emerge. Not 100% of course, and maybe not even the majority but The original thread was talking about the decline of cat sailing, not the decline of "racing".

And Mary, I never said that John should and I would never, ever, ever expect John to come out of his pocket with even one penny to provide me or anyone else beer or food, and I certainly would never ask (expect) him to come off the water to do do anyting other than relax.

Perhaps there should be a paradigm shift in our approach to enticing people into this wonderful leisure time activity.