HOW could the America's Cup support your particular Class or Multihull Sailing in general (Big and Small Cats/ Tri's)?

Gary Jobson, US Sailing will be meeting with Russel Couts (Director of the America's Cup) in about 3 weeks. The MHC is taking up Gary's invitation to submit our best ideas of how our classes, fleets and communities could work together to grow the sport.

The America's Cup group is very serious about this goal and has already committed to getting something like 100,000 kids on the water in San Fransisco.

My new job is to pull together these ideas and get the complete set of ideas in one document and draft the best ideas to the MHC for Gary to read and hand to Russell.

So, I will skim the cream from this thread and would happily include all thoughts emailed to me at mschneid AT msn.com

How about setting up something like a decathlon for kids and have the multihulls be one or two of the legs. My thought is that sailing would be one of the legs and swimming up to and crawling over a couple of cats could be another part of the course. Some of the other events in the race: Sprint, targets with slingshots, Hopping in a sack race, rings, ect. Idea is to make the catamarans stand out from all the other events but not make them the only focus. This way you may be able to see more kids than just those that know about boats.

Mark what we need are some cat sailing schools. There are a few in Canada but we need a lot more. We need to convince Yacht clubs to add a cat program into their schools. Its really that simple. There is too much momentum in yacht clubs to keep doing it the same way.

how about sponsoring some sort of a US Multihull championship for beach cats in conjunction with an America's Cup event (a little late to pull it together for this weekend's San Diego event).

Mark, you and Harry have done a great job in getting the Hobie 16 Class included in the Junior Olympic Events in your area. Other areas should follow this lead. At Sail Sand Point in Seattle, now a US SAILING Regional sailing center, we have six Hobie 16's and seven Hobie Waves used in our classes and Open Sailing. See www.sailsandpoint.org. It is not difficult to expand the local sailing programs to include these boats. All of our H-16's have been donated, and are kept in shape by cat sailing volunteers. The Waves were initially donated by sailing groups, including the local Hobie Fleet Division 4, and have been expanded by us to meet the demand of Open Sailing program. The Wave continues to be the most popular boat in Open Sailing. The Waves are also used in outreach programs, similar to the "Fast and Fun Programs" started by US SAILING. Free programs are offered to get people out on the water, and encourage them to consider taking up our sport. The Wave is a perfect platform for this program. You can take several people out on the boat, and have them take turns on the tiller. The experience has been great.

Caleb Tarleton

Mark, when you say the America's Cup group wants to get 100,000 kids "on the water" in SFO, I'm not too clear on exactly what that means.

Are they going to load kids up on their big AC Cats and take kids for rides? Or take them out on the support boats (power boats) to watch the racing...or?

And, are you talking about one weekend, or a week, or a month?

I would like to see the kids (teenagers) get out on some beach cats. They could use Waves up to I20's, anything that will get kids out on the water on a cat, but I don't know if there is a big enough local fleet in the Bay area to get 100,000 kids out, unless it's over a whole -summer long- time frame.

Barb Short has been getting kids out on Waves for a long time, she probably has some good ideas.

I'd like to push 100,000 teenagers off the SF bridge in winter, but that's just me...

And the girls haven't even started dating yet!

A systematic approach to becoming a better sailor might help.

*knowing the wind
*understanding sail shape
*tactics

those are a few points that come to mind...

RE kids...

I haven't a clue.... as of Saturday... they did not have a clue... they made the promise to San Fran though and they will figure it out.... It is just one of the million things they are doing.... The technology they showed this weekend was un fricken believable!!!

My point is that outreach is part of the mission.

first: get the sport on tv... espn. make a commitment to an advertising campain reaching out to kids, like the nfl does. the sport gets almost NO exposure. hire a first class publisis, establish an easily recognizable brand for americas cup(logo) and wear it out on the sports fans. promote all major events and get big time sponsorship. then let people know they can get involved in racing on there local level...kids need role models to aspire to, and the VAST majority of kids(and adults) can't name a single sailor because they have never seen nor heard of one. you put these big fast cats on the tube and put a name to the face like nascar...you have new fans interested in the sport!

This Americas Cup can benefit the Catamaran industry simply by not foregoing this unprecedented opportunity. This series is like no other in so many ways. Technology has finally caught up to sailing. The on the water graphics that sport vision has developed can bring sailing into the mainstream. In the past, even seasoned racers would have had a hard time figuring out the sailing angles, which boat was ahead, what tactics were being used, what the rules were etc. Camera angles from a helicopter could be very misleading. And the boats… holy crap!!! If any thing could draw people in, these boats can!

The play-by-play and color call is still in development, but is getting better with every day’s production. They need to get this in front of people. Get these boats on Dancing with the Stars, Sponge Bob, The great race, Hawaii five-0 the movie, Chevy commercials, transformers, Geritol, aspirin, CSI, Boner pills. And they need to do it now. Give this thing time to grow an audience before it’s over.

What benefits this series and brings it to the mainstream will benefit all sailing. Here and abroad. They need to get on it. Larry Ellison where are you now? You have done so much to get this series where it is today, don’t forget the second half. Look at what it took to get WWE, NFL, NBA, and midget tossing to their current standing.

I, for one, would love to make a living promoting sailing and slinging cats and other small boats and green wind sports in my area. But the challenge here in my area is to create the entire culture. School, Sales, Racing, charter, etc. I believe that this culture can be grown anywhere in the developed world. But people deed to be shown that there is an exciting and extreme way to enjoy sailing. Unfortunately I don’t have the jack to get this rolling.

Some of that excitement needs to come from those that have the means and the connections to get the ball rolling and show off this series.

The AC corporation is trying to sell their brand and generate this market. So... you agree with what they are attempting!!!

Now the challenge is... How can us rank and file sailors find some sort of partnership that serves our goals... more sailors on the race course... AND meets the AC goals.

I need some solid thinking put on paper to turn in!

Remember... they are not giving out money as grants to promote your class or class event! .... We need to find a partnership!

What if they sponsored all the F18s for the upcoming Worlds?
After the Worlds they can be distributed to youth training programs across the US.

Tony F18 That is a good suggestion..

Also they could pay for a few containers from the EU, AU and maybe ARG so that more boats come to the worlds.

the first question i have for the ac group is do you want to grow this in the existing sailing world or do you want to take it mainstream? because these are two totaly different strategies. one will get some more young sailors and the other a lot of young sailors...is it ready for "prime time"? or do we have to search the web/youtube to find any results...mayby see some results on the bottom line ticker for the espn networks and mayby, just mayby, see some highlights on tv? i guess what i'm saying is americas cup still an elitist/exclusive club or do they really want regular people interested in it...i mean horse racing is the sport of kings but the track is full of regular joes laying there money down and the triple crown gets full coverage by all media outlets and is on tv.

We need to apply to their motivations...they want the event to be successful and clearly they want to promote catamarans as being a very technical and race worthy craft. This gets ambitious - but they could find ways to leverage our enthusiastic sailors (hopefully some with time) in different regions of the country to promote some sort of Multihull experience sponsored by the America's Cup. That would tie in to Caleb's (and others) youth initiatives and expand on the theme.

I'm not offering any solutions as to "how" this gets done...but it's an idea worth a spitball.

How about asking them to provide the boats and advertising coverage for the 2012 US SAILING Multihull Championship, Hobie Alter Cup, and the same boats for the US SAILING Multihull Youth Championship?

Promote these Championships as a gateway for the US SAILING Multihull 2016 Olympics Team.

Also, ask for them to commit to support the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Events.

Caleb Tarleton, MHC

jeeze... you'd think they were made of money...oh, wait...they are

market the crap out of the multihull culture (high tech X-sailing crashes the blue blazer party) to the countercultural movement (aka teenagers).

Get girls/women into the sport... the rest will sell itself. How many times do you hear complaints about the sausage-fest? Spend 70% of your budget marketing to this segment.

Get Sean White to drive one of the AC cats and Travis Pastrana to drive another, and put them in a "Cage Match", two boats enter, one boat leaves!

No Rules, just get from here (St. Francis YC) to over there (Sausalito) and back, alive.

Last man (boat) standing wins!

ESPN will be all over it, call it X Games, Sailboat Style.

Oh, and give each team extra points for picking off Kites and Windsurfers, under the bridge!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zket9Z0TXds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnAUwAvD68s

These are just two of the many other sports we have to compete with, for new blood.