For Mobile... We installed TapaTalk on the Hobie forums and it does seem get a bunch of users. So many people are using mobile browsing. I do it at home too... I use a mini iPad a lot. I still prefer to browse forums on a desktop, but people needing tech support at the beach would love mobile friendly sites.

No - that is why forums are still valuable

considering the 1000's of registered users of this site hardly post anymore....

what would a mobile app do? This is a forum, not a chat service, or interactive game.

anyone can read the forums on their smart phone if they were sooo desperate to see the "current" thread...

Forums and Blogs were the "Social Media" before facebook changed the game.


IMHO in the USA - Catamaran sailing is a sport for the "older" generation - i don't see any young locals having any interest

Around here it's jetski's, SUP's, windboarding.

When we have races, it's largely 40 or 50 year olds or older

Our local shop just went out of business this month, When i go to the local hobie shop, it's all about kayaks and scuba gear.. the sailing department is in the back closet and dwindling and if i ever see a customer there, it's an older male looking for line or replacement parts for their legacy boats.

Our beach is 95% pre 1997 cats

8 years ago when i bought my 1985 TheMightyHobie18 there were 10-15 catamarans on the water every weekend. The past 2 years there have been 3 of us that are there regularly ... I am 47, the other guys are 53 and 73 years old. NO new / young sailors around here at all.

any "new" people i see sailing are in their 50's

Matt, i am curious, has there been any real bump in cat sales since the AC?

How have wildcat sales in the US been?

I think Cat sales are still pretty good. Hobie 16 is pretty strong... Wave, Getaway, T2... Wild Cat is not so hot. Seems the F18 deal was shaky... too many changes for the class to stay strong. Harder on the boat owners and players like us where we build in numbers. The Hobie Class was built on minimal changes.

The America's Cup spiked interest, but not sure it related to new sailors. Nothing huge anyway.

Don't be a dumbass.

Agreed.

America's Cup ect is making Racing catamarans look fun again. Look at all the youth racing classes sprouting up.... 16 foot spinnaker boats and now foiling catamarans. There's an opportunity to catch young peoples attention and gravitate them to the sport. Not talking about *bling. Does this site have too much bling? ( http://sailinganarchy.com/ )
Imagine something similar with America's cup pics, AC45 World series, the new Phantom and Race news and feeds from around the world ( BTW almost every major beach now has live streaming web cams )

I meet 10-20 guys every year ( ages 15-50 ) whilst launching or landing my cat that come running down the beach asking about sailing, is it difficult? Where are the resources? Is there a community? I want to learn about it! Its even easier when they're 5 -6 cats pulling up on a beach after sailing up and down the area while people camping and people out on motor boats have been staring you down for a few hours there IS an interest.
We just need every opportunity to turn someone merely interested, into a boat owner that has a blast feeling what we guys already know about. I'm not dissing the guys that started out cat sailing by lashing two canoes together six feet apart with bamboo and using their feet to steer upwind both ways haha. The site really is fine as is but it also took me a good while to dig around, figure out what a formula 16 trapseat was, formula 20? I have a non formula Hobie 20? is there anything on that!?? ect ect.

I sailed my Hobie 16, 3 weeks after buying it and had never been on a catamaran ever, but i knew the sailing basics. Now most warm weekends in the summer I take out a couple 17yo's for a 30 minute sail on my 16, 10 mph wind, show them how to launch, tack, jybe ( not flip )and make it back to the beach where we started and they're hooked! I let 'em group up and sail around the lake on my spare 16 for hours at a time. ( keeping an eye on them of course, life jackets mandatory ) There is a BIG interest of Younger sailors here..... The teenagers are getting tired of sitting on dads pontoon boat watching me fly a hull past them

Besides all the negative political spam I hear about there's got to be a way to inform and encourage new sailors without too many obstacles and hurdles.

BTW, have you guys seen the GC 32 catamarans??!! Watch the vids, holly cow!

Activity is clearly down.

Why? Probably many reasons.

Some of the most visible characters have moved on to different interests.
Others are probably out sailing.
Facebook and other new channels take a lot of traffic.

No worries though. Spring is soon here again and I can go sailing again.

Okay Tim, reading your inspired remarks about younsters on the beach and the pontoons, I conclude that you have a really interest in raising up the youth with regard to sailing.
You are not alone in this, there are in every sport innumerable youthtrainers, coaches and volunteers which all are to be praised for spending their (often) freetime.

Being a windsurfer of the first hour, I spend 40 years each weekend on the beach between and with younsters. I enjoyed that very much, and still do. Specially when I got older, it made me somehow feel younger.
I've seen two beach-generations growup. When I walk in the city, I met known grownup guys with kids and younsters on their hands which I've learned windsurfing in the waves when they themselves were still kids. But I've also seen that a part of them was getting hooked on harddrugs or commiting suicide or ending in prison.
(I was invited for the Duth Big Brother II for being the older mature man in the group, which I ofcourse refused)

The last ten years I spend half of my summertime in the beachpost of the local beachguard, actually living daily between the youth. And I've seen the upcoming of the socialmedia and the influence of it on them.

But I keep saying that all this has less to do with this forum and its interface. I've said before in another thread that I consider this forum as a hangout bar where catsailors have a sort of after-sport time, discussing, sharing experiences, showing pictures and videos and finally feeling globally connected to each other.

No moderation! I am opposed to censorship and I don't subscribe to the idea that one persons views/moral compass should drive an opinion board visited by a very diverse group. When someone gets out of line the community does a pretty good job of calling them out and the thread dies or a handful of posters go off and have their own little **** fight. It's pretty easy to figure out who posts something you want to read and who doesn't. I also want to know ahead of time who I should I avoid on the beach or a least what subject matter is off limits. Eye rolls can be involuntary if you're not prepared for the comment.

Pirate nailed it, forums are dead tech for news feeds. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram... is simply too easy to use and post real time. Posting from a smart phone to this forum is a bit of a hassle compared to modern social media sites. Have you ever tried to bring up the main page on your mobile device? The site needs a proper scrubbing, more isn't always better.

Leave the forum alone. Clean up the front page and make it relevant or do nothing and let the new tech replace the site.

For the uninitiated that looks like a personal attack. But Brogger is being funny and Brogger being funny is a rare moment indeed. His overly sunny disposition often gets in the way of his wit. It would have been a shame to have lost this moment in the name of moderation.

Oh, and I'll wade through 30 minutes of forum posts for little nuggets like Karls.

I'd heard that

Now... that certainly is a miss-quote!

Tim, I'd direct your attention to the "what have you done for sailing lately?" thread.

Lots of gems in there. The easiest is to just have interested folk hop on your boat for a quick ride or two. Then they can see for themselves it's not rocket science, it's fun, and you can send them on to your local club or dealer...

Speaking of dealers, I'm sure they'd be happy if you offered to take some of their curious customers out for a ride when you are available. With the exception of a few, many dealers don't have inventory sitting around rigged to sail.

Hope it helps.

Interesting questions......

& its a tough thing to figure out with any degree of accuracy due to the fact that people's usage changes.
When a "hot topic" is on the go and an individual is heavily involved in that topic then the time online can be almost non-stop....
I'd bet those that got tied up in the highly volatile political threads were most likely simply clicking the refresh tab every couple of minutes just waiting to vent their position yet again

On the other hand when its quiet then we all tend to get offline more and actually enjoy the real life



As to where people go.....
I frequent several other forums and I'm sure others do likewise be they sailing forums or forums related to the individuals other 'hobies', mine would be car and 4x4 forums for example.
Once the forums are dealt with then its time to run a closer eye over the FB groups purely incase I missed something



Mobile app for the forum ????
We did a trial on one of the car forums I run and we simply created a FB group with the same name as the forum, we then notified the members of the FB group and invited them to join.
Around 75% of active members joined up within a few days and the rest soon followed, there was however a few that flatly refused to join...... strangely enough they were the ones that had historically been the members that were the argumentative type in the 'political' style threads.
I guess that they didn't want their "real name" seen by those they'd pi$$ed off


The social side of the forum then moved rapidly to the FB group and the chitchat section on the forum died within weeks, for some that was bad and for others it was great.
The social side of the FB group improved member relationships dramatically to the point where social get-togethers have become an almost monthly event with a strong and increasing turnouts, something we struggled with when we only had the forum.
The tech side of the forum saw a drop off for around 8months but then recovered back to its usual rate of posts and now is heavily used on a daily basis

All up as an "experiment goes", we found the FB group IS an asset to the forum for the social side only..... when worked correctly the two work in harmony and are a compliment to each other.


would an app work here ???? perhaps if the front page was cleaned up a lot !
its too segmented at the moment and needs to be brought into much smaller groups that contain all the subsections ..... and that means a big overhaul for the forum

Mike knows me. He knows I'm just jerking his chain.

Yes and that was my point.

I'll be the first to admit that my sense of humor works better some days than others (especially online vs. face to face). I took Karl's retort as half-sarcastic (and remarkably contained, actually).

But, you have to admit that there have been some threads that have gone so haywire that I could see how people would go away, or newbies would bail, as others have pointed out above.

Moderated forums have their own drawbacks, but the behavior tends to be far more pleasant, aka community building.

Mike

So to Pirate's "social experiment", if you're on FB or Twitter now (is there some abbreviation for Twitter? Like Twit?) is there a sailing site/page you frequent often?

And for what purpose (social engagements, news/info, smack?)

Perhaps the instant media (FB, instagram, etc) is good for the "live" regatta stuff (and the debautchery at the parties) since people can follow almost real-time ( I recall the pain of waiting for updates on the forum as to who's leading which leg)?

But the forum for it's breadth and wealth of information... where folks have more time to develop thoughts, search, etc...?

Am I starting to get this right?

And have you seen Phill's boat building project in the F-boat sub forum? Holy crap that's cool...