Hi Mary,
Here's the way I see it. Most cat sailors like one design racing. There is another part to it just as important and that is the sailors want the boat to be high performance. The problem is the high performance boats cost more than the low performance boats. The sailing contest in the high performance boat is more challenging, more difficult, more strenuous and the tactics are more complex because of the speed. The cost of the high performance boat drives the number of units sold down and there are several sources for high performance boats which divides the competition even more in the more challenging sailing contest.
At the low end of the performance scale and low cost, we have a dominance in numbers in the H16 class.
So here is the conflict. Large numbers of boats in the low tech low cost class or few numbers of boats in the high tech higher cost classes. What are we going to do? If you want to race the high tech, fast, demanding boats, at this time you race Portsmouth. If you are willing to race low tech, slow boats, sail the dominate beach boat, the H16.
Boat cost is a prime driver in this situation.
Bill