Guys,

I'm not in Australia but several of my sailing related friends are and from what they are saying it appears that Mark L. is right. That is too say that I hear very similar things from other people. Clubs being terminated and the remaining ones are struggling with various problems like declining membership and very high liability insureance costs. At some point reverse critical mass is reached and then the system is likely to collapse totally. A healthy cat scene is to a very large extend dependent on a large base of recreational sailors. How else will young people get into contact with sailing ?

I'm not sure we in europe are doing it right though. I think we are lucky that the scene is so compact geographically. If a club fails then the next one is just 10 km down the road. And of course we still have lots of holliday time at our jobs and a liability culture that is geared towards low costs and preventing excesses. This is nothing that the sailing organisations have achieved but it does really help keeping the scene alive.

Wouter