I'll strongly disagree on open racing not growing the sport. Our open class club has grown significantly over the last couple of years, with quite a few people being new to cats or sailing. Some of those new to cats have had mono background, some of it one-design. The fact that they could buy a used boat, any used boat, to figure things out before spending lots on something newer has been key to their decision to get involved in the first place. If they had to buy a certain boat to race in one-design, well a portion of them wouldn't be sailing with us. While people have from time to time discussed dismay at ratings, nobody to my knowledge has left the Fleet because we race open. Comments on the positive nature of what we do relate to the fact that as a group we are friendly and helpful to all. Comments from the former one-design mono sailors mention the closed-off nature of the one-design world where nobody talks or shares their little nth-degree speed secret as being among the reasons they gave up racing in those venues.

From our success has sprung the local A-Cat scene, which is also growing leaps and bounds. A good portion of those sailors came from our Fleet. And, most of them have not given up the Tuesday night open racing, they just do it in addition to the A-Cat regattas. The A-Cats that don't participate are more dismayed with our racing being more mini-distance format than strict up and downwind.

As people from our club have moved to the A-Cat, we are filling in new members right behind them - looks like 5 new teams this year. And of the ones that moved to A-Cats, most are still members of WRCRA, and as mentioned above they still race with us even though their boats may be stored at a different club. So, we're growing and growing the sport in our area, and we're open class all the way.

As for monos - by far the biggest participation in mono racing on the Bay is PHRF weeknight races, not one-design. Getting these people to switch is mostly a matter of exposure to multihulls. Most are died in the wool mono people, and the issue of one design or handicap is meaningless for them to switch to multis or not.

That having been said, I believe the A-Cat is the perfect weapon in the fight switch mono dinghy sailors to cats. Its performance and agility is just the thing for that purpose, and yes it's heads up racing as well. As much as I know that the Hobie-16 is a great one-design and recreational boat, lots of mono sailors have bad memories of having sailed on one at one time or another. You'll hear stories of horrible tacking and capsizing and the like. These people will never move to any class that they associate with that, whether it's one design or handicap. They'll swear that cats can't go upwind or stay upright.

So, what grows the sport? Open? One Design? I say fixating on that question is killing the sport. Most of that conversation revolves around moving the existing participants into one method or another. There's room for both. What will grow the sport is forming clubs with the right frame of mind designed to bring new members in as old members stay or move on. Clubs that are designed to introduce new blood to sailing and to cats.

So, again, yes open racing has grown the sport, and even kept it from ceasing to exist in some areas. Is it the perfect form or racing? Probably not, but all things have their drawbacks, and what matters is the question or whether the merits outweigh the drawbacks for the people involved.

Rant mode off...