We had races of 310+ boats, and it was mainly Hobies and similar boats. Now that same race is mainly Tornadoes, F16s, As and F18s and we get 7-10 boats. That's not exactly a tribute to the pulling power of performance!
I think we must be careful not to blame development for the decline in catsailing in Aus or any other place.
The fact that two happening follow one another does not mean that there is a causal link between them.
A counterexample : The first Iraq war and the sanctions on Iraq have been very bad for catsailing world wide. Afterall ever since the invasion of Kuwait the international cat sailing scene has been in decline.
So what is truly my point who is not to say that the OD fleets of back then would have died out no matter what was done and that maybe the rise of development classes slowed done the decline, maybe even the reason why the cat scene is surviving.
AFterall the attracttiveness of OD (bad performance) has been whole unsuccesful to prevent these 300 boat fleets from totally being decimated within a single decade. Not really a testiment of the pulling power of the One-Design either, I say.
Wouter
