One of my thoughts have been that all of the discussion of One-Design vs Portsmouth really has several other discussions buried in it. Here’s how I analyze the 9 polls.

Poll 8 – A 77% majority prefers all Hobie 16s together rather than a separate B and C fleet. Is the 23% the B & C fleeters? Or is it A fleeters that don’t want the B & C fleeters in their way? Is the majority position in the best interest of the sport?

Poll 6 & Poll 7 – It’s more important to race head-to-head on similar boats (60%) than it is to race one-design or one-manufacturer. Over 25% of the folks would opt to do both one-design and head-to-head at the regatta by running a single start and scoring it both ways. Less than 10% find brand (Nacra vs Hobie) more important than head-to-head racing. The percentages came out the same whether it was Hobie Fleets or Nacra fleets making up your one-manufacturer regatta.

Poll 5 – 90% prefer racing head-to-head over one-design if they believe the boats are adequately similar and it doubles the fleet size from 10 to 20.

Poll 4 – The respondents prefer higher tech cats over larger one-design fleets. (So do we all want one-design, but all want everyone else to switch to the boat we’re on?)

Poll 3 – The respondents prefer smaller one-design regattas to larger Portsmouth regattas

Poll 2 – Hmm, 5 to 10 regattas with 10 to 20 boats in the regatta (or start). I’m surprised that less than 10% would want 2 50 boat regattas. But then again only 2 regattas would be a bummer. No good tradeoffs here.

Poll 1 – If you have 10 regattas how would you like them? No majority, but the biggest block is one-design, followed by I don’t care lets just race, followed by I like variety, with almost nobody preferring Portsmouth only. I am in the variety camp so again I was surprised by the poll. (Don’t we all tend to not understand why everybody doesn’t think like us?)

Poll 9 – After looking at the results of Poll 3 & 2 I realized that one of my base assumptions (personal preferences) wrong (not shared by the majority of respondents). That assumption was that bigger is better. If you look at the results of Poll 9 it makes a nice bar graph. About 2/3’s of respondents prefer some type of small to medium regatta centered around 25 or so in a regatta or fleet. Only about 1/3 prefer the biggest fleet they can get.

Conclusions. (based on the poll responses, not necessarily on the larger non-responding sailing public)

1. Head-to-head racing is what’s important. It more important than brand or one-design.
2. Not everybody is looking for a really big regatta. Most people have a much smaller “ideal” size.
3. High tech will draw some of our people, either splitting up one-design classes or causing one-design class migration.
4. Brand bigotry or manufacturer loyalty is not as big an issue as many would make it. It’s less important than head-to-head, one-design, or Portsmouth.

Potential Actions:
1. Look creatively for more ways to create level (head-to-head) racing experiences.
2. Be happier with 25 boat regattas. Not everybody wants 50 and 75 boat regattas.