Hello Jake and Zuhl
From your posts, it sounds like its very much a zero sum game so far. You have seen the collapse or acceleration of the decline of the Hobie 20 and Hobie 18 fleets and a major drop in the open fleet. You have not seen any new sailors joining the party from the outside either.
Regatta attendance is up as the folks with new boats participate in more regattas then they have in the recent past. And every one seems to want to join the party. The age old problem of… well…. I am not committing to this regatta because…. I don’t know who is going is seemingly solved now that you have a large enough pool of racers. You hope that the sailors who are left are motivated by the social scene more so then the racing and will continue to participate. So far… so good!
What you don't directly discuss is what happens to the remains of the TheMightyHobie18, H20 and Open fleets. It sounds to me like they must either change (now) or die. Best find a buyer (recreational sailor) for your old boat ASAP or else when the music stops... you will be left with an old boat and no market for it and no racing group either. It seems to me that your club(s) should find a way to keep the remaining sailors interested in racing the boats they have or, within two years, you will ratchet your total number of racers downwards. For instance, one strategy would be, starting and score the other spin boats (F16 and spin equipped 20s against the F18’s… this will keep the few non F18 sailors competing against similar performance boats (and against teams of similar skills). Likewise, recognizing that there is no future in one design TheMightyHobie18 or H20 racing in your region could be declared by regatta PRO’s. The surviving three boat fleets would then be grouped into open class rather then pretending that one day… some day… my 3 boat class will regain popularity. Better to do the triage sooner then later before you find that the racers have lost interest in the lack of a competitive racing scene and are gone and not coming back. Note that in Europe and Down Under… they don’t worry about one design classes as much as we do in the states… They just race everyone together and then sort out classes, divisions etc etc later.
One thing that your region is rapidly loosing is a bit of diversity in boat choices. A word of caution, a fact of life is that many couples on the TheMightyHobie18 and H20 may not want the challenge and physicality of running a chute. In division 11, the Hobie 20 class attendance peaked one year after the boats introduction. Several of the H16 and Hobie 18 sailors bought new 20’s and raced the boat for a year (best turnout was about 15 or so boats. Two things then happened, their crews preferred their old ride (especially the 16 sailors) AND the rest of the competitive fleet of sailors stayed put on the 16’s. In the end, the fun factor for the crew and the competition in their old fleet drew most of the racers back to their 16s. Most of the new 20’s were sold off. A few guys just moved out of cats altogether while some just never got the juices flowing to go racing in the small fleet of 20’s and their boats sit to this day. The open class sailors on comparable boats (P19, Nacra 5.8 and Nacra 6.0’s) never got a chance to convert over to a big one design fleet and they did not have any experience racing against the 20 sailors until the class was down to just a handful of boats. Today these 5 or 6 20’s race in open against the P19MX’s and Nacra 6.0’s. The point of the history lesson is that a catastrophic decline has happened and for quite good reasons. Its important to not loose folks during the evolution…. (These cats don’t breed particularly well
{biology joke from one of those evil evolutionists!}).
Take Care
Mark
well... I really hijacked this thread! Sorry Dave.
