This is my opinion and my opinion ONLY.

It may be hard to get the Great Lakes F17 fleet to travel because they have great racing venues, great class racing, great comraderie, etc. in their own neck of the woods. An example would be the Performance Midwinters last year in Pcola where 3 F17s showed up (2 from the Panhandle and 1 from AL), one of those did not race the second day.

This is not a knock on the Great Lake F17 sailors, but why travel when you have an active local fleet? Seems like wasted money.

Okay - now change all the regional verbiage from Great Lakes to Southeast and F17 to F16 and any regatta outside the Southeast, then repeat the above. Same problem.

Our DPNs are very close, but we would exclude some of the most active F16 teams by limiting it to 1-up, as well.

Don't take my opinion as any answer, maybe some F17/F16 sailors will speak up and initiate it. I will pretty much consume my budget by going to South Florida and Huntington Lake, CA in 2007 - so it'll have to be pretty much confined to the Southeast for me.

Sounds like a deadlock - Southeast sailors won't travel to it if outisde their region and Great Lakes sailors won't travel to it outside their region (maybe).

I personally like the idea of LARGE starts and fleet scoring within that start. It lets everyone mix it up, but there are fleet bragging rights, as well as handicap bragging rights on the line.