I think it's more complicated, everything is tradeoffs. I might want more one-design than I am getting, but I might still prefer some kind of mix. Even if I prefer one-design I might prefer a larger Portsmouth fleet to a smaller one-design fleet. I might be brand loyal and prefer a small er brand fleet to a larger multi-brand fleet. I might prefer to go to more regattas and hence be willing to attend smaller regattas to get more sailing time. Others prefer either high tech boats, simple boats, or the largest fleet regardless of the nature of the boat.

Here are 8 Questions that help us begin to shed more light. Please consider each poll seperately, in a vacuum, like it will be the whole experience by itself.

For each of these questions pretend that the choice you make will be a choice of your entire sailing experience this season. Pretend that the choice you make each time could not be augmented by other regattas.

I am surprised at the strong showing for people want to go to 10 10 boat regattas in question 2. Did folks like 10 regattas or 10 boats in their fleet? hmmm. If we assume a 10 regatta season how many boats do you want in your fleet?

Jamie, I haven't had to make so many decisions in all of the last 10 years!

Anyway, in question No. 9, you did not specify whether the "fleet" is one-design/formula or Portsmouth or a mixed fleet including both. In question No. 2, I assumed you were talking about one-design fleets. Is that correct? And the same for question No. 9?

Hi Mary,

the answer is no. 2 and now 9 are/were just asking about fleet size and regatta frequency.

One of the real questions I have asked my friends, because I see it as a real choice, is wouldn't you rather sail in a 20 boat handicap fleet, especially if the boats are close in performance, than a 10 boat one-design fleet. But that was based on my personal assumption that the more boats the better. And of course it also mixes many values together. Surprise surprise, more people than I would have expected prefer a small fleet.

Most of these questions are designed, not real thoroughly mine you, but at least intended to compare 2 values to each other. Sometimes the same question is only slightly altered to present the same opportunity to a Performance fan and a Hobie fan.

Now look at question 4. In my mind, a surprisingly large number of people prefer the high tech high performance boat to sailing in a larger fleet. At least that is how I read it.

The responses to questions 6 & 7 reveal far less brand bigots than I expected. I think they would have been picking the first answer on both of those questions.

Also, I think the poll is indicating that head to head racing is more important than one-design racing, hence formula would seem to be a logical place for many of these folks to go.

Keep in mind your results are skewed towards the readers of CatSailor.com and don't represent a real cross section of the sailing public, or even tha catamaran sailing public.
For example when you look at the results of question 4 you see that they are almost exactly the inverse of what people actually choose.


By the way it's called "class loyalty" not "brand bigotry" and its result is stronger classes and better racing.

Rhodysail, by "readers" of catsailor.com, I assume you are referring to the people who frequent the forums on catsailor.com.

The forum users seem to be more high-tech oriented and more into Portsmouth racing, whereas my magazine readers are a much more diverse group. There does not seem to be a whole lot of overlap between the two groups. I'll bet most of my magazine subscribers have never even seen the catsailor.com forum, and I'll bet most of the catsailor.com forum users do not subscribe to my magazine.

I haven't done a survey through Catamaran Sailor for about five years. It is definitely time to do another one, but I just haven't had time to put it together. I like to do surveys in the winter when people have a lot of time on their hands to think instead of sail.

Your comments are just as much slanted !




How do you know the results are skewed ! By the same reasoning they may well not be ! So what is the REAL crossection of the catamarans scene anyway ? Do YOU know ? If so how do you know ?

You seem to believe that catsailor.com readers are different from mainstream sailors or at least you suggest that but what is your proof of that ? Maybe it is your view that is skewed and not the catsailor demographics ? Can you disproof that ?

With equal value I can sya that you should keep in mind that YOUR perceptions are skewed. This statement is just as non-sensical as they other one.





And you've established "what people actually choose" on exactly what research ?

I think we have here a very strong case of some-one not accepting the results as they conflict with his BELIEVE of the same situation. This sort of thing is very fashionable lately.

Wouter

What Bob said is right - and backed up by statistics.

There are 418 members of catsailor.com who have more than 10 posts. There are more people on the Hobie 16 scoresheet in North American than that (547 to be precise). I'd wager the total population of small catamaran racers in North America to somthing on the order of 4-5 thousand.

There are only 53(!) members of catsailor.com that have more than 200 posts. The active members of catsailor.com are not representative of a cross section of the population of catamaran racers in North America.

There have been, at most, 33 responses to any of these questions. This isn't a statistically significant sample to make an inference about a population.

Personally, I noticed that these forums were completely dead on the weekend of the Spring Fever Regatta. The vast majority of the "regulars" on this forum (yourself and a few others excluded), are from the south-east United States - and were at Spring Fever.

What Bob said is right - and backed up by statistics.




And what does that say exactly ? That poster with less than 10 posts can't vote, won't vote or that the other 418 poster all sail exotic boats only ?

In this statement alone you make many assumptions that you can not support.



How are these two things related, exactly ? Are you suggesting that hardly any H16 sailors attend this forum while all the exotic sailors are here without exception ? That is another implicet assumption you can't proof.

How are we to tell that either 20 or 1 F18 sailors voted in this poll or that 1 or 20 H16 voted in this poll. You can't possible know which sailors voted what. And how do you know that the H16 sailors that voted didn't vote in favour op open-class racing ? What you ARE doing is looking at the result and thinking :"a h16 crew will never vote that way, therefor they must be unrepresented or the results must be wrong". However this is just silly reasoning, you don't have proof to the contrary only your own disbelieve that you are trying to square with the results. It can be just as much proof for the fact that your perception may be skewed.



So ?



And how exactly is that of inportance in this vote. Are compulsive posters more inclined to vote against one-design racing that non-frequent posters ? Or maybe the other way around ?

Are OD racers less inclined to post anything on catsailor.com than non OD sailors ?

And so on.

You bring an argument into the discussion here that is surrounded by implicet assumptions that have never been proven in themselfs.




You can deduce all that from simple things like :"There are only 53(!) members of catsailor.com that have more than 200 posts"


So how many posters of more then 200 posts must catsailor have to become representative. Or is there any particular significant reason why YOU choose the threshold of 200 ? Would 150 posters with 100 or more posts make the poll any more or any less representative ?

Your argumention is as firm as saying that I'm irritating Dutchman because my father had only 1 sister instead of 2 brothers and 3 sisters.

I can see you all knot in agreement to the last statement; but this is all voodoo arguments. They sound and look great but are nonsensical.





What a non-sense. The conclusion may well have large grey area's but any numbers of samples is enough to make an inference about a populations under the condition that MORE samples will definately make the inference more dependeable.

But what you are doing is typical for debates in modern societies. You equate the fact of reduced dependability/accuracy with the believe that the conclusion is WRONG. It is never wrong, only less accurate with less samples.

You can not possibly know what the outcome will be is all in USA (4000-5000 sailors) had voted in these polls. For all we know the result of 33 votes may just as well be spot on. There is no reason believe that the first 33 voters magically will always vote differently than the following 33- 5000 votes. They may do so but with equal probability they may not.



So ? Are cat sailors form the south-east USA more inclined to vote against OD racing than in favour. Does it have something to do with the drinking water there ? What is it exactly that you ASSUME about these sailors that makes you believe that the conducted poll is not representative ?


Wouter

In my terms:

Class loyalty is a Hobie 16 wanting to support the Hobie 16 Class.

Class loyalty is a Nacra 6.0NA wanting to support the Nacra 6.0NA class.

Brand bigotry is a Hobie 16 sailor preferring Hobie 20s racing at their regatta to Nacra F18s.

Brand bigotry is a Nacra F18 sailor preferring an Inter 20 to a Hobie Tiger.

I consider the HCA to be a manufacturer multi-class association, and not a class association (same with INCA).

You're too easy to provoke, Wouter - it's almost no fun.

You also don't know the difference bewteen an assumption and an inference:

Assumption: Something taken for granted or accepted as true without proof.

Inference: The act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true.

I made no assumptions in my statements, other than a healthy majority of catsailor.com regulars are in the SE United States.

The inference is that the more someone posts on catsailor.com, the more likely they are to vote on this. The numbers quoted are merely reference points in relation to the population of catamaran sailors who care enough to vote on this.

Most significance tests assume you have a truly random sample. If your sample is not truly random, a significance test may overstate the accuracy of the results, because it only considers random error. The test cannot consider biases resulting from non-random error (for example a badly selected sample).

That's my second point.



No, you're an irritating Dutchman because you don't know [censored] about statistics and are too proud/arrogant/egotistical to admit it.

Oh, and by the way - I haven't looked at the results, because frankly - I don't care. I've got more than enough events to go to. Starting this weekend, I'll be competing in an event nearly every weekend until October. And I'd rather be on the water than looking at a computer screen, making a point in an argument that in the grand scheme of things, doesn't mean squat.

In YOUR terms you can call it whatever you want but it doesn't make it reality.