Interesting thread but I'm not sure that it will catch on. Kids want bang for bucks, that means hopping onto a fully rigged boat and stepping off at the other end, now you and I think that may or not be the case but from experiance of the kids of today, thats the sad truth. If the set up time takes longer than their Play Station then you are onto a loser. Parents are mainly to blame as we have become so used to a service led society that with our too limited spare time, we want to just get out there ourselves and pay somebody else to teach our kids.

As much as we would like to think that people will spend many hours building a boat I can tell you that only the dedicated parent will make them and he / she will be mainly in it for the thrill of " making the finest and best design" he can, which lends nicely to the freedom of a Formulae class. Kids are going to be only the end user product of a parents desire to build a boat.

As to halting the general decline in sporting activity in our kids then I'm afraid we need to look at our lifestyles first, sort out that and give ourselves more time to paricipate with our kids and I would bet that the kids would then be willingly to go sailing as there are a lot of good times to be had whilst sailing.