Congratulations and MANY THANKS to all of the Race Organizers, PRO's, Race Officers, Social Directors and the Countless Volunteers that make these events the fun and competitive events they are! We salute and support you with our attendance and sincere appreciation. Thanks also to the organizers of the many smaller regattas that we support… they are almost the same amount of effort and are equally valued and appreciated!
Mark



Fleet 204's 30th Anniversary Madcatter Regatta was North America’s BIGGEST EVENT in 2006! The big surprise is that the largest single handed event were the Hobie 14 NA’s….(it may have been their only event as well!)

Regional Sailing Happenings!

MadCatter (North East) 92 Boats (May)
Statue of Liberty (Mid Atlantic) 78 Boats (July)
Midwinters West 71 boats (March??)
Wildwood (North East) 64 boats (August)
Tradewinds (Florida Keys) 61 Boats (January)
Spring Fever (South East) 61 Boats (April)
Ontario Open (North East) 58 boats (August)
CatFight (Mid East) 44 boats (August)
A Class Mid Winters 42 boats (January)
Mid-Americas (Texoma) 42 boats (June)
Wayward Winds - Texas 39 boats
Ruff Riders – Texas 38 boats (August)

NATIONALS/NA’s.

Single Handers

Hobie 14’s --- 35 boats in Clear Lake, Iowa (Sept)
A Class --- 30 boats in Bristol RI (Sept)
Wave ---- 24 Boats Key Largo (Dec)
Isotopes --- 15 Boats NC (Oct??)
Hobie 17 --- 14 boats in San Fran CA (August)
Nacra F17 --- 14 boats in Racine WI (August)

F16's --- NA

Spinnaker Boats (2 person)

NAF18’s --- 40 boats in Carlyle, Iowa (August)
Tornado --- 21 boats in Miami, FL OCR’s (January)
Nacra 20 ---14 boats in Racine WI, Performance Race week (August)
Nacra F18 --- 5 boats in Racine WI, Performance Race week (August)
Hobie Tiger --- 0 boats in San Fran CA August Hobie Tiger /H17 Nationals
F16's --- NA

Sloops 2 persons

Hobie 16 --- 56 boats in Naranganset, RI Sept
Hobie 20 --- 34 boats in Texoma
Hobie 18’s --- 17 boats in Texoma
Sharks --- 15 boats in Put In Bay, Ohio

Nice Job Mark
Hobie Mid Winters West had 71 boats.

The H14's were held at Clear Lake Iowa in Sept.

The Ontario Open in Rochester had 58 boats.

Thanks Pat

Anyone else have a regatta with 40 or so plus boats that I should add? (while I can still edit the previous post)

I always find this kind of index interesting.... For me, it drives up the question.... Should we have more BIG events... and fewer small local regattas? ... or vice versa...

While its extremely difficult to kill off a regatta... perhaps we are better off pooling resources and getting people to schedule the regattas on their personal calenders rather then... (Oh... regatta next weekend... Hmm... nothing else happening... I am in!).

If people are doing 4 regattas a season... We might want to focus on those big events and really help make them EVENTS. The Syracuse folks have made this an art form (I didn't say it was pretty art.... although some might describe those bottles of rum in this fashion)!

Thoughts?
Mark

For Nationals, you can add:

Sharks -- 15 boats
Isotopes -- 15 boats
Waves -- 24 boats

I like the way the Rudder Club and the Gulfport Yacht Club do it - a couple of small races a month for club members, and they work around the Regional- and National-level events. This gets you lots of stick time, brings up the level of the whole club, and builds fleet relationships.

As for bigger events, I think two (maybe three) week-long events, and two or three long weekends a year is the most that the average weekend warrior can manage. I'm lucky in that I have a mast-up club in an active region with big events nearby.

$0.02 <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Mark,

In 2006, the A-Class Midwinters drew 42 boats and we are expecting over 50 this year (2007) in Islamorada.

Bob

John:

We use to have series races all the time back in the 80's. I hope we bring them back. Makes it less intimidating for the local sailors to get started.

Doug Snell
Hobie 17 "Stress Free" #007
Mystere 4.3 #149
Sunfish

With the Waves, it is really easy to do local fleet racing and involve lots of other people, new people, etc.
At Put-in-Bay in the summer this past year we got in over 55 fleet races and involved close to 30 people. This is really making things grow in the class.
Also, with all that time on the helm, it makes for pretty good sailing at the big ones. Point in fact, I won the NAs this year and a new PIB cat sailor, Patrick Green won the Nationals. Hard to beat good, old time-on-the water.
And Last year in Key Largo, we also got in another 55 or 60 fleet races and again the class is growing locally.

Then the final exam is the biggies, like the NAs and Nationals.
Rick

West Coast regattas

31 catamarans for the ABYC Memorial Day regatta in Long Beach
27 for the Multihull Invitational Regatta at ABYC
35 for the Wine and Roses Regatta in Santa Barbara
49 at the San Diego Classic

Mark,
One of the things I have always found interesting is that the North Americans is often not the highest turnout event for a particular class. As an example, this years Madcatter had more H 16’s then the Continentals did. In the A class, the midwinters had 42 boats, the NA’s had 30 and the Lake Hopatcong Regatta in NJ had 30+. This has always seemed bizarre to me.

More importantly, how do we get the Anappolis, NJ and Bristol a cat fleets to play together next year so we can have big starts to practice for the Worlds next year?
BTW How is your new A cat?

Eric

Is it possible that simply calling something a NA, Nationals, Continental, etc. is enough to scare off some sailors that maybe don't htink they're that serious?

The boat is very good... New RacerX sail coming this week!!!
Need to build a postive rotaton plate for my mast base... Considering a spiffy boom as well.

Here I go on my soap box again!

Racing is a social activity... Everyone on the race course has to more or less agree on how to play the game. I was also quite surprised at both the lower turnouts of Hobie 16 and A class turnouts this year for nationals. I think what you see is the result of the decisions that a class must make on what their culture and values are. If you want people to travel ... you better have a culture that says.. we get great race committes and venues and that's where we spend our money... party!... OK but definetly second tier. So, there are lots of reasons that one attends a regatta. If the event is primarily about competion...then you eliminate lots of other racers who might rank competition a bit lower on their list of reasons to go racing. The A class appears to have a large number of these kinds of racers as well. So... Keith summed it up as "scare off racers who are not that serious" I would emphasize the "not that serious" part of his point of view is the dominant mind set. ( I bet the preworlds aka the Keys in January has more appeal and support then the Worlds at the same place in Novemeber)

The Hobie 16 class can get huge turnouts at Syracuse and Wildwood because they focus on the party/social aspects. ... They don't let the seriousness of the regatta get in the way of the good times.... 204 has the ablity to get both parts right ... but IMO... they know that the social aspects keep the less dedicated racers coming back for more fun. The Wildwood events were notorious for people dragging a boat to the event just to get into the party (back in the day) ...

Take a look at the CRAC site (www.sailcrac.com) on the schedule tab. I have the current regatta schedule for all the cat events in the mid Atlantic and selected big events listed.

You guys need to host or attend three events to allocate slots for the worlds... Do you guys have a schedule yet that I could add.

That's Carlyle, Illinois - No respect I tell ya. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Could have been worse.... Could of just called it Carlyle, Fly Over Country!

(just your normal coastal snob with not enough time to double check the details).