Prior to 2020 club dinghy fleets worldwide had been in steady retreat. One reason was the other global pandemic – the happy but damaging delusion that every Oppi sailor is a new Ben Ainslie, meaning parents with enough resources removed their kids from club fleets to trail around the country to big regattas. Often the parents too had been club racers making for a double whammy. Travelling right now is harder giving club racing an unexpected opportunity to stage a comeback. It is also easy to forget how popular dinghy racing once was… and for how long; these (top) are National 12s racing in the UK in 1959! Also, compared to a few years ago, an interesting club boat has never been so affordable. A J/24 (above) will cost you no more than a 505 (left); and today you’ll find one of those for the price of that fully loaded Oppi outfit
Oh, and no private coach boats! Everyone can be on a level field for a couple of hours.
The camaraderie and social interaction at the club are just as important as the racing on the water. Sharing of ideas on everything from go-fasts on the boats to raising kids is the glue that makes the majority of the sailors want to come back. This most often happens when you’re rigging and unrigging. So the club needs to cater for that. Yes, buy your drinks and chips from the club but drink them with your mates in the boat park while unrigging. The Kiwi OK dinghy class traditionally has the third-place finisher of all big regattas write a report on the regatta for the class to publish. It talks about each race, who leads at the marks, lead changes and so on…
What if we had the mid-fleet finisher write up their experience instead? What happened in their race, who had a blinder of a regatta and finished five places better than they normally do? Would that not be a more fun read for the 70 per cent of the fleet who relate to it? These are the sailors we need to come back every week. See, at grass roots, yachting is not all about winning. It’s about being part of something that brings pleasure or the magical day where you sail your personal best (PB).
I am not some PC nutter who thinks everyone should get a prize and there must be no winners or losers. But ‘winning’ might have more to do with how much enjoyment the sailors have than just a results sheet. We have been presented with an opportunity to keep the bigger local fleets (thanks, Covid). We, local racing, are in a battle for people’s time, a very precious commodity in today’s world. To win that race we better seize the moment and make the experience fun and sticky for sailors throughout the whole fleet. * The Pareto Principle which suggests that 20 per cent of your activities will account for 80 per cent of your results.
SEAHORSE 37
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