Having been involved in other sport " set ups " one has to be really careful to not make it too formal to begin with, the type of sailer we are going to get participating in F16 events will be ( as can be seen by the UK sailers ) on average, fun loving adventurous types ( if they wanted pure competition then they would ahve picked another class ), scare off those type of sailers and you have no grass roots support. When you get 50 boats at a meeting then yes you do have to start measuring the one or two boats which do look a bit weyward, until you reach that point then making things really formal with 3 days for measuring etc will put off more than attracting more participants.

Modelling ourselves on the F18's would be very wrong in my opinion and will stop the rapid growth we are experiancing. My hunch is that the majority of present participants are not impressed in the way the F18 class has evolved and like the less formal F16 approach. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />