John Williams has led you to believe that US Sailing is making money on this gig.. False!
US Sailing does not collect your entry fee... If you want to make a killing because you sell sponsorships like crazy and can pocket the entry fee.... Have at it.

USS has promotion of the Olympics as its primary purpose? If this is true and Olympians rig and tune their own boats then tuning is part of the discipline.

I'll risk being labeled a heretic: NOT permitting individual teams to tune their own boats was a major flaw of the old system.

Tuning is part of the discipline, tuning is good.

Here's my take on getting sponsorship money. When I talked with the VP of Marketing at Delta Air Lines about throwing some money my way for new sails, he said he would rather spend a whole lot more money, to sponsor an EVENT, vs. a single individual. Why? Because at an Event, they put up banners and put their stickers on ALL the boats, etc.

Look no further than the "Audi Melges 20 Championships". http://www.melges20.com/

Audi didn't sponsor one person, they sponsored the Entire EVENT.

Also, I think I saw some big mono-race sponsored by VW, and then there's the Heineken Cup in St. Maarten. http://www.heinekenregatta.com/

Or the Mount Gay Rum regattas. http://www.sailbarbados.com/events_MG.html

Or the Rolex Regattas: http://www.rolexcupregatta.com/index2.php

That's the direction this needs to go, in my opinion.
The sponsors want visability, they want top billing, so give it to them.

Make it a huge beach party for the spectators, beach volly ball, a spectator fleet of big cats, maybe some Hobie Wave rentals off the beach for the on-lookers, stuff like that.

If I were king, here's what I would do. I'd get someone huge to sponsor a week long event, but it would really be two 3 day events. The first 3 days would be a big all classses regatta, which would serve as the Nationals for All cat classes, ie. you run the A's, the F18's, the F16's, the Hobie 16's, the Waves, etc. all at once, on 3 separate courses of course, but everyone all in one general location, big parties every night, like the mono guys do at Key West Race Week.

At the end of the first 3 day Nationals event, the top 3 from each class get to then race in the Alter Cup regatta, wich would be held on 10 (or 20) chartered boats, like our traditional Alter Cup, but the event sponsor is paying for the charter fee. The rest of us can hang out and watch, or maybe have a side regatta, or a Pro-Am, or a "Get a newbie out" type regatta, on a separate course, while the Alter Cup is going on for the last 3 days.

It would be like Tradewinds, where all the classes get together, and then it would be the Alter Cup, where just the top crews from each class race.

Color me flabbergasted. Mark, I only post in this topic when something needs to be corrected. US Sailing absolutely makes money on the Championships. Every one of them. They keep over half the sponsorship cash, and charge the host $50 per sailor. It was $25 per sailor when I started volunteering in 1999.

Do you have facts to refute this? I have several years worth of budgets - actual numbers on paper from hosts.

Edit - and I have no problem with US Sailing making money.

We had a tough enough time addressing boat maintenance between rotations and getting rotations fast (10 minutes on the beach was a great rotation)...imagine the delay if everyone was re-tuning their spreader rake, diamond wire tension, mast rake, etc. etc....Additionally, in the case of charter boats, what if someone made that adjustment and exceeded a setpoint, damaged the boat, and cost us a boat in our rotation. It just wouldn't be practical in the old scenario to allow the teams to make that level of adjustment.

The goal was to take most of "the boat" out of the equation and put the result at the hand of the sailors. A range of adjustments were usually established (light to heavy crew weight, light to heavy wind) and adjustments were put in the middle of this range. Sailor adjustments were pretty much limited to mainsheet cleat angle and trap height.

And Mark wants me to DONATE my boat for use. How'bout F*** Off

And Mark wants me to DONATE my boat for use. . . . . <whaargarble> . . . .

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NASCAR doesn't try to "take the boat out of the equation". Tuning is an essential part of sailing or any other type of racing.
...
Equally NASCAR doesn't have drivers change cars; the Olympics doesn't require a boat swap.

Just as a point of reference, at the Championship of Champions that I sailed in last fall, ALL the boats (20 Flying Scots) were donated by club members (Dallas Corinthian). In return, the donors received significantly discounted new sails (main, jib, spin) with only 4 days of sailing on them. All the boats were set up more-or-less identically (some of the control layouts were different). Everybody raced each boat once (in every race). Rotations were made on the water, utilizing a floating dock that was towed out to the racing area each day.

NASCAR doesn't try to "take the boat out of the equation". Tuning is an essential part of sailing or any other type of racing.

Equally NASCAR doesn't have drivers change cars; the Olympics doesn't require a boat swap.

Maybe sprinters should change shoes between heats, pole vaulters exchange poles, tennis players exchange rackets...

Re. the tuning and rotating boats, if we got enough boats so that each team had one, or limit the amount of teams to only 10, then you wouldn't have to share boats, ie. no rotations, so each team could tweak their prebend and mast rake to their liking, for the entire regatta.

You'd get in a lot more races per day without having to rotate boats after every race as well.

It was IROC (International Race of Champions) that had identically prepared race cars. The drivers came from all sorts of racing "classes"; Indy, NASCAR, GT, Grand-AM...etc. Makes complete sense. It's about the driver. Don't mock what has been a great event with poor analogies.

I'm not mocking anything, though I will if I choose! Is IROC still around?