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davidyacht View Drop Down
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Posts: 1343 		Post Options Post Options   Quote davidyacht Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Something So Right
    Posted: 13 Sep 23 at 12:48pm
Just thought a discussion on Dougal’s article might provoke some comment

For my pennyworth a championship week for me is a holiday so a non hospitable venue with a risk of a poor sailing experience in the peak holiday weeks is unlikely to draw me away from home.

Some of the historically best venues imo may lose ground due to poor experiences, particularly if good racing cannot be delivered.

Once the attendance numbers drop, it is really hard for a class to climb back.

So really important for class committees not to go on whims of fancy …
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JimC View Drop Down
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Posts: 6644 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Sep 23 at 3:20pm
The other side of the coin is that if you only have championships at a handful of clubs in the south then you'll most probably end up as a regional class, not a national one.
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Posts: 1343 		Post Options Post Options   Quote davidyacht Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Sep 23 at 3:26pm
Originally posted by JimC

The other side of the coin is that if you only have championships at a handful of clubs in the south then you'll most probably end up as a regional class, not a national one.

One place I would be happy to return to is Tynemouth, great and welcoming club, great organisation and a challenging race area.  Ten by and Abersoch would get my attendance and not very South for me.
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Paramedic View Drop Down
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Posts: 927 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Paramedic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Sep 23 at 7:36am
Is championship attendance still a fair assessment of the health of a class?

The trouble is these days is if you have aspirations of being in the "over 50 club" in terms of attendance there are actually surprisingly few clubs or facilities that are capable or willing to run an event of that size that will attract enough boats.

Facility based venues such as Portland or Plas Heli will attract the entire front of the fleet and you may get visitors from the front of other fleets borrowing boats. However further down the fleet you get whispers of the venue being "soulless" or "theres nothing to do" and before you know it the back 25 boats have talked themselves out of going and you are back to 40 boats. The fact that they are missing out on potentially the best sailing and racing they'll ever do doesn't enter the equation.

So to pacify the back of the fleet you make use of smaller clubs at sleepy seaside towns. Most of these clubs have a membership of less than 150 and their entire club puts their weight behind running your event (They really do want you there). To obtain the same level of race management as the "facility" venues is difficult due to manpower, equipment and sometimes location restrictions. Quite understandably the club volunteer force like to work with people they know and bringing in a race officer is not always welcomed (Though many small clubs have excellent in house ROs and some small clubs are very open to external help).

Personally if we are prepared to accept that the race management and event communication *may* only be 95% as good as facility but with the club putting 200% effort into it I think that has to be the way to go.

But I think there are less than 10 clubs that tick the boxes to deal with a fleet of 50+ that tick the boxes to bring the back of the fleet to the event - and that really is the key to numbers. And none of those less than 10 clubs is a perfect venue - there truly isn't one!
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JimC View Drop Down
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Posts: 6644 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Sep 23 at 11:38am
Originally posted by Paramedic

Is championship attendance still a fair assessment of the health of a class?

Well to my knowledge we only have two measures available to us, Championship attendance and no of races at clubs published with the Portsmouth Yardstick lists. Neither is particularly satisfactory, but they're all we have.
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turnturtle View Drop Down
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Posts: 2538 		Post Options Post Options   Quote turnturtle Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Sep 23 at 3:05pm
Jim, irc, back in the day you were quite hot on the new sail numbers classes published.  

I mean it's not like any skipped a few numbers to fool us, that would be grossly cynical behaviour.
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JimC View Drop Down
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Posts: 6644 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Sep 23 at 5:20pm
Originally posted by turnturtle

Jim, irc, back in the day you were quite hot on the new sail numbers classes published.  

They stopped being published in the Racing Classes review I think, so that killed that. World numbers for International classes are available in the class reports on World Sailing website. And yes, there were certain classes that were a bit economical with the actualite but often it was spottable.
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Posts: 3393 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Sam.Spoons Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Sep 23 at 10:13am
Lots of modern SMOD classes start with a big number, the first Blaze was low 500s, Spice was 301 the first Laser 3000 was 3000 (3001?). I'm guessing but do RS400s have any sail numbers below 400 and are RS200s and RS300s similar?
Spice 346 "Flat Broke"
Blaze 671 "supersonic soap dish"
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JimC View Drop Down
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Posts: 6644 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17 Sep 23 at 10:16am
As I recall the RS200, 300, 400, 500 and 600 started at 200, 300, 400, 500 and 600 respectively.

Edited by JimC - 17 Sep 23 at 10:24am
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eric_c View Drop Down
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Posts: 382 		Post Options Post Options   Quote eric_c Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Sep 23 at 2:57pm
Originally posted by JimC

Originally posted by Paramedic

Is championship attendance still a fair assessment of the health of a class?

Well to my knowledge we only have two measures available to us, Championship attendance and no of races at clubs published with the Portsmouth Yardstick lists. Neither is particularly satisfactory, but they're all we have.


You can find other measures.
You can look at published open meeting results, how many boats are turning out to how many meetings.
You can look at appearances in big PY meetings etc.
You can look at what's for sale on ApolloDuck.
You can look at Facebook etc and see what's going on in the class, including internationally.
You can look at race reports on Y'n'Y.

What is actually important to you? Personally I want a class which has a few opens (and/or a multiple presence at PY events) which are not 200 miles away, is sailed by 'my kind of people' and looks to be there for the long run so I won't lose a load of money on something which will go out of fashion. If I was looking to do a Nationals, I would want the next few venues published and I would like them to be at venues which will attract a good crowd, not up North for political correctness reasons, or unfavourable to us as a team. E.g. if sailing with the mrs, we'd be light for some classes so not looking for a windy venue in September. I'd also consider the format of the Nationals, now I'm older, I'm not looking to do 4 races a day for a 3 day weekend.
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