But that is severely limiting the participant pool. You are already limiting it to people who would be willing and to do it. By forcing the sailors to come up with the money themselves, you are also limited it by those who can either afford it, or drum up their own sponsorship. These are radically different skill sets IMHO. The kind of people that are willing and able to sail a beach-cat 1000 miles (possibly non-stop,) are not the same kind of people who are well moneyed, nor are they the kind of salesmen that they can get companies to cough up the necessary cash. Sure there are examples of people who can pull things together well enough for a one-off type event (crossing the Atlantic or whatever,) but an annual race is a whole different ballgame.

Either way, asking sailors if they are interested is pointless, you don't need a whole lot of sailors to participate. What you need to make this sort of thing successful are organizations.