Our Midwinter Championship has declined since the days of forty to fifty boats, largely due to the lack of F 18s in the area, and a total lack of marketing. Mark's theory of over saturation has played a large role as well as clumsy race management.

I never made SF, but my son has sailed in it, and we know it was presented in pride by hard working lovers of sailing.

I attended the Buzzelli this past year, and was very discouraged by the race committee. I served on the first day as mark set officer for the F 18s, Roberts 27 & 30, F 16s and Wetas. At times all designs were represented on the offset leg. I was very frustrated by the boat operator, who did not acknowledge my requests to re - set the offset mark as the wind backed, which resulted in the boats having to "pass" the weather mark to lay the offset. When we set the first weather mark and offset, the Race Officer radioed us and asked which side of the weather mark had we placed the offset. He did not know me, but evidently, he knew the boat operator. We were almost hit three times during the day because he was busy on his notepad and drifting down on the starting line. I was glad to get off the boat. There was no wind for Sunday.

Sometimes the big shows ashore can not save a reputation for very long.

Spring Fever managed to balance all the components into a very nice product for years. My guess is, if we wish hard enough for it next year, the good will fairy will return with his magic.

Meanwhile, as we speak, the International Sunfish Midwinters, at Pensacola Yacht Club, is under siege by the sailors. The RComm shortened race six incorrectly and the lead boat "finished" third or fourth. He filed on time yesterday and was awarded points equal to First Place. This morning the other sailors are filling the protest box with similar requests. There are four Italian sailors in the fleet, and one of them is the Class President.

I almost had to serve on the Protest Committee (lack of certified judges), but since I was the Safety Officer the judge - in - chage wished to select a couple judges from out of town to hear the case this afternoon. Racing today was canceled due to a fresh cold front rolling through with a base of nineteen knots and gusts to thirty.

Saturation, poor management, and poor marketing are general causes. In the case of a top shelf event, average - age may becoming a factor. Coaching prior to a quality event is the newest fad that attracts sailors.

My guess would be "if you show up (as in pre-register)they will build it"

And if no one was able to show for Spring Fever, what would make you think they'd show up for the resurrected Pensacola race? Does venue make that much of a difference?

And, if the regatta organizers combined the race with non-sailing activities (which were marketed separately to whatever demographic the activities were designed for), would it potentially draw more sailors?

For instance, if Sarasota had a mid-winter or regional regatta when there was a large boat show or music festival nearby, would that give you more reason to sail there knowing you'd be out in front of a potentially larger spectator group?

Or would you be more likely to attend since your non-sailing partners/family would have something to do while you were out on the water all day?

Jake, maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder, and maybe just walking through the process of planning an alternating schedule will get people to bring their boats out, for fear of losing their event. May not help if the numbers are as low as you describe, but losing Spring Fever is a pretty big clue that a change is in order.

Bert, clinics are not a new fad, at least not for Hobie Cat racers. The Guest Expert Program has been chugging happily along for at least the past 15 years. Matt will know exactly...

Mike

Ocean Springs Yacht Club has an open invitation to F18's April 4, 5, 6 for 3 days of bouy racing....come on down.

I've been dissecting Spring Fever attendance data for the last 12 years and have come to the following conclusions. This is a very complex problem and there is more than one issue that is leading to the decline. These are facts that have come out of the data I'm working through and it's early...Having access to this registration data over such a long period is really interesting and I'm seeing patterns emerge. I probably wouldn't have been able to make these conclusions without the data, but they make sense with observations in hindsight.

1) This one surprised me: Out of the top 10 overall attending boat classes in that 12 year span (based on pre-registrations), 60% of them are no longer being manufactured and the classes have all but died off. Nacra 20 (78), Hobie 18 (75), Hobie 17 (62), Mystere 4.3 (51), Hobie 20 (34), and Nacra 17 the old one (33). It should be no surprise that the other boats that round out the top 10 preregistrations in the last 12 years are F18 (181), Hobie 16 (160), A-Cat (117), and F16 (69).

2) the Hobie 16 pre-registrations peaked at 28 in 2002 but didn't muster more than 7 in each of the last three years.

3) There has been a steady decline in the Open, miscellaneous boats to the point that there really haven't been any to count in the last few years. I'm talking about the odd dead-boat-society Nacras, Prindles, etc.

4) F16 registrations have been pretty steady over the last 5 years - including being only slightly down this year.

5) A-cat pre-registrations have been increasing (except for one year) since 2007 but the bottom fell out in 2014. They peaked at 25 last year but only got 10 to sign up for this year (and several of those were coerced).

6) F18 registrations have been fluctuating at around 16 entries since 2004 but the bottom also fell out in 2014 with only 7.


In summary for the Spring Fever situation, the box rule classes were clearly taking over and the odd-ball boats were no longer showing up. There are a lot of factors for this from event promotion and larger sport wide influences.

The question I have after this brief look, is that is the disappearance of the odd dead-boat-society boats a bad omen? Does this illuminate the lack of new sailors entering our sport? Does the gradual evolution of box rule boats, making older boat designs less competitive, choke the entry level purchase point that used to be a spring board for new sailors? If this is the case, should we be trying to attract sailors from other active sailing classes to multihulls?...so, yeah...lots of questions.

I'm starting to put together some data on what sailors migrated to other classes and how many sailors just quit coming and I'm shifting my data source to race results (actual attendees) instead of pre-registrations (pre-regs were easier to extract from the website). It will be a little while before I have this together but I'll put together a report with graphs.

I'm thinking that like everything else in life, it comes down to one or two things;

1. Time

2. Money

3. Both

Well, hell. You could have saved me three hours of work.

I would like to see if Lake Hartwell lake levels relate to attendance. The past several years there have not been great, and I could see that being a factor leaving less desirable memories of the lake.

If you can find the April lake levels since 2002, send them to me. I'll align them and see if there is any correlation.

Jake, I encourage you (and anyone else willing to take a hard look at their data) to prepare graphs and crunch conclusions. I think this can shed some valuable light that can help across classes and areas.

If the conclusions truly lead to the simple reality of time and money, I stand by my prior recommendation. Have fewer regattas per year to pull our time/cash resources; but instead of throwing events away forever, rotate them over two years rather than one.

Mike

Well, I just put $75 worth of gas into my kid's car, and that only brought it up to 3/4 full.

Light airplane flying is going through the same problems as sailing, only to a greater extent, because flying is even more expensive than sailing. Av Gas is over $5/gallon in most places.

A one hour flying lesson at my local airport will set you back $150-175, depending if you want the C152 or the C172. "Little" airplanes have gone way up in price too, from about $50K 10 years ago, to $150K now.

My local airport is down to only two airplanes for lessons, and one instructor, when 10 years ago he employed 4 instructors and had 6 airplanes for rent.

The kids I see today, hanging out with my 4 kids, are not interested in doing anything out doors at all. Not flying, not sailing, not bike riding, camping, none of the stuff we did as kids.

Why?

I blame Al Gore for inventing the internet.

Kids today can sit indoors on Facebook, or twitter, texting, or watching You Tube vids, or comedy central TV, anything where all they have to do is sit and click to be entertained.

Why leave the house and sweat and get dirty, when you can sit in the house and eat and watch TV?

Now take a look at an 'expensive and hard to learn' sport like flying or sailing. There just aren't too many kids or parents who can afford to do either anymore, especially if you are putting them through college. College costs are out of control, been going up 10% a year for the past 6 years I've been paying.

Seen what a new F18 goes for?

Any wonder why the Hobie 16's and Laser's are still the most popular classes? It's about all anyone can afford to race any more.

Maybe Tim is onto the answer ... forgo these fast expensive cats and have everyone purchase Hobie 16's for a truely 1-Design Regatta (full circle).

Or better let's not do Skipper / Crew racing, I'm favoring the Hobie Wave...cheap and indestructible.

Get two, one for you and one for Kris, then you can train/race against each other as well.

Remember the debates we used to have here 10 years ago, One Design v. Formula Racing?

The chief arguments were; racing One Design put you at the mercy of the manufactures who gouged you on the sails and your boat might become antiquated as others moved on to faster boats, vs. the flexibility to shop for sails, parts, etc. and the escalating arms race with the F classes.

It seems the F classes have created more dead boats however, as the top racers jump on a new design every year. Look at the A cats and the issues they are going to have with foiling.

Who's next?

Foiling F boats?

What will that do to the cost of a new boat?

you can use some boats for more than racing, you know... Just sayin'see next post - I'd venture that those "dead" boat societies might be sailing but not racing

I've cruised this boat almost as much as I've raced previous boats (we'll exclude the "dark years" from 2007-2012 when toddlers ruled the roost).

Noodling around on the boat for a day with the family appears to be much cheaper than traveling to regattas (fuel, lodging, entry fee, damage, crew costs, etc). And I don't bring my "game face" which tends to scare off other potential crew...

There's also 4-5 other boats in my class nearby which might actually be willing to join a group sail. (I took your advice and looked for similar boats in my area when making my selection)

Sure, I miss all the group hugs with you little rays of sunshine at some of the regattas (poker night at Eustis, Mug race dinner, T-winds pizza shop, Hiram's debautchery, etc), but is sure is easy dropping this thing in the water for an afternoon vs. all that goes in to racing.

Did you guys read Jakes Point....

The time and money answers are pointless because there is nothing that can be done about them.. unless you can make time or print money and give it away to cat racers.

Jake observed....

The entry level racer on older ex race boats stopped showing up. Why?

They did not see the light and purchase a current race boat joining the fleets of H16s, F18s, A class and F16s, Why?

Why did half the A Class fleet at Ilsamorado compete in the short version of the regatta... Why was Lake Hopatcong the largest turnout for A class in 2013...trumping the west coast NAs and the big East coast mid winter events.

Why is Madcatter the largest Hobie 16 regatta with 30 to 40 16s on the line?

Spring Fever had venue, party, price, time of year going for it... Proof they had 100 boat turnouts.... fighting it out with Mad catter for top regatta in the country. They always delivered on their part of the deal... What happened?

About 1 year's tuition at a state college

It could be argued that the total frequency of regattas tends to dilute the importance of each. So really stellar events like SF might get lost in the noise of NAs, Worlds, regional and local events.

Are you, the racer, experiencing some sort of burnout with the abundance of regatta options?

Are/Would you reciprocate attendance at a long distance regatta to those who traveled as far to attend "your" regatta?

How many regattas can you realistically plan to attend with your time/money budget? How do you prioritize them?

If you're drawn to an event primarily by who's attending, what are you doing to draw that "talent" to particular regattas? Can your dealer(s) help with that?

If you're drawn to a particular location or peri-regatta event, are you still just as motivated to attend this year as last?

I think money is a big part of it. Most of those sailing older boats are on them because they are more affordable. Their budgets are tighter and they are more sensitive to the cost of gas, entry fees and lodging. The economy has been tough on a lot of people. Many have lost jobs or have taken lower paying jobs.
As an example, I drive 7 hours or more each way to most regattas I attend. That's nearly $200 in gas. Then add entry fees of around $80 and lodging, which could easily be $250 (I'm usually able to stay with the few friends I have). Maybe we should make an effort to keep entry fees low and try to house out of town guests. Regattas with on site camping are very popular. Plus, it is fun to camp and hang out with the other sailors. Spring Fever has been popular because of the camping and the price break given to those driving 500 miles or more. Ocean Springs regattas are popular because of the on site camping among other reasons. Also, promotion is huge. If people expect a big turnout and everyone is talking it up, they are more likely to come.

You guys are asking all of the right questions, and making some excellent points. Keep it coming, this is very helpful.

Mike

Nobody has even mentioned that it is on easter weekend or the light conditions that generally prevail. That hampered my attendance lately. 3 days o' sailing is great but hadn't happened the last couple of times I was there, and it was a pretty long haul for me. The party and the people were always awesome and were the deciding factor of participation for me, when I did go. I truly hope they have a change of heart after a break and try again. 37 boats is a great entry list at most regattas, maybe just dial back on the expenditures until participation increases again.