That's easy... Get there first. Should be easy for you, Ding, with all your "wisdom of age", right?

Gahhh! Not all on the same course, I hope.

Group the Moths with the cats. Dinghys, boards and Vipers on another course - or at least another weather mark / gate.

Last year ... yes!.... 1 course two weather marks But the PRO seemed clear that they wanted two circles for this year. New PRO on dock though.

Managing the racing in this kind of event is another tough one... Clubs get this experience the hard way... years and years of trial and error. Adding cats and moths to an event is a huge shock to the systems of a club. I am a big believer in finding those clubs who have some experience and trying to get their advice and push it to the RC and OA. ie Shorten that learning curve!

I think your recommendation is spot on, racing wise. Hopefully, the class reps for the club make this recommendation as well.

It's interesting... A class wants to race this kind of event to show off their boat to attract new members and have good racing. After all, the event is designed to show off high performance sailing.
So, a class will deal with the headaches of a big multi class regatta for that reason....
Now if you go off to your separate circle with the F18's and Moths... the racing gets better but you are not showing the class off as much to the other sailors.. The debate becomes is it worth it to the class members? It's always about the tradeoffs. For American, the hospitality, venue and the hard work they put in make it an easy call for me Two circles, cats and moths on one would be good racing. One circle with two weather marks would be fine with me as well.

But...Here is another problem . Two circles means that you double the RC resources.. It also means that you send the cats and moths a mile down the LI sound.... If there is breeze.. no problem for the moths.... If it's a drifter... moths basically sit there... You can't really do much but tow them back and forth.... hmmm. So... its not as straight forward as most think.