With the Seacats in Columbia, SC we have (and I'm guessing) about 30 members. I live about 90 miles away from most of the group so I'm a little out of touch with the day to day activities and details. However, I believe that of those thirty we see about 6 to 8 at two local regattas a year. Only two boats from this club (David M and myself) regularly travel to regattas around the eastern coast. The club has camping / sailing events and used to do a lot of Kayaking and Mountain Biking excursions - there is still some of that but it's gone down some. I think that the 'racers' came to power and those events didn't get the focus that they used to - which brings up an interesting point.

Racers are passionate about their sport and I think they tend to rise to the top of these kinds of organization because of their strong and very dedicated personalities. But I think that that hurts some of these organizations like the Seacats because in reality only a few of the members share the same interest in racing. I could be wrong (again, because I've been pretty out of touch with the group this past year), but I sense that the group is in a bit of a decline in activity.

But then I kind of got off topic again....I'm not sure why we see such a mix of boats on the water even though I'm sure, given a choice, most people would prefer to test their skills in OD racing. It took me four years and four boats to finally get into one design racing so I may be a good case study as to why I ended up open class racing for so long.

Boat A) Late 2000 I decided I wanted to get into sailing after racing one weekend on a friends 21' sport monohull. I remembered the Hobie 16 my father had for a short while when I was a kid and knew I wanted to get into catamarans. I was looking for a Hobie 16 or similar when the same friend with the monohull explained to me that I wanted something with more performance and I agreed. He threw out the brand name 'Nacra' and I eventually found a dirty 'ol Nacra 5.2 two hours away that had been sitting unused for 5 years in a guys backyard. I knew nothing of the local catamaran scene and even less about racing. I ran into a local sailor (Michael Coffman) while cruising Lake Hartwell who also was on a 5.2 who helped introduce me into the scene that I would have found no other way. I eventually was attending about as many recreational events as I was regattas (about 5 and 5 a year). Michael was in college at the time and wasn't attending many regattas so I was sailing in a small open fleet.

Boat B) At this point, recreational sailing was pretty high on my list. My brother lived on Folly Beach in SC and I really liked sailing off the beach. I bought a Hobie 18 from a friend of a friend (same friend with the 21' sport monohull) that was moving from Folly to Peurto Rico. The boat was pretty rough but it was sailable and I left it on the beach and the sails in my brother's appartment with the agreement he would maintain the boat and use it whenever he wanted to as long as I could use it when I came down. I had a motorcycle at the time and planned to cruise down on the bike to spend a weekend sailing (I actually did that only ONCE!). I ended up using the boat only about three or four times a year and the agreement with my brother wasn't going very well. I was hoping he would get hooked on it too but that wasn't working either. The boat was in no condition to race competitively and I ended up selling the boat two years later.

Boat C) I had distance raced some with the 5.2 and I really liked the idea of focusing on that. I had been performing a lot better distance racing than course racing and was consequently enjoying it more. I wanted a bigger boat with spinnaker. Locally everyone was on 18' or shorter boats except for a few Supercats. Class racing entered my mind and I spoke to a few other sailors and they expressed an interest in also getting 6.0s. My naivity allowed me to believe this might happen! Inter20s were being sailed occasionally locally but were expensive and the class also was too intimidating to me. The best of the best were sailing those boats and I felt that was going to be way over my head. The 6.0, and the folks sailing them, appeared to be more of a 'ground level' choice in my opinion at the time and there were classes of 6.0s at the big distance events. So I found a killer deal and bought a 6.0NA and sold the 5.2. I later got pretty frustrated with the 6.0 because my focus was shifting more and more toward course racing. I was still competitive in the distance racing but really struggling around the course but sailing in open class with nobody to really tune with. Nobody else bought 6.0s around me - a couple did buy I20s though .

Boat D) At this point I really wanted to get into a class where I can race OD locally because I felt that this is the only way that I was going to improve significantly (and I was right). David and I had sailed the Tybee 500 and learned volumes and that might have temporarily quenched my thirst for distance racing some too. I was considering what to move too next, I20 or F18. Our local racing scene was seeing 5 or so Tigers at each race. The local I20 racer (Nigel Pitt) was also sailing an F18 at the course races and the I20s with the Seacats in Columbia, SC were rarely traveling. Personally I didn't care for a few features on the Tiger and the whole NAHCA thing was iritating me politically so I was still leaning toward the I20. Then the Nacra F18 became available and I decided that was where I was going because it I liked all the features and the class was all around me. An unfortunate destructive incedent with the 6.0 presented an opportunity and I purchased a brand new F18. I've been tickled to death with the purchase ever since and have learned a ton.
After finally realising several bad tuning habits by comparing with other boats, I've pleasantly found that we've been very competitive on the local scene. On the other hand, I still feel like I'm missing a distance racing component with the F18. My ideal scenario would be to own both an I20 and an F18 but that's not possible at the moment.