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Congratulations on both!  Some really good results in a very competitive fleet.  Well done to Rick too.

Sam

Pray for light winds!  The 'Xenons' need quite a bit of grunt in a breeze...  I take it there wil be a few 12 sailors there if Rick will represent the MPS.  Good luck to Rick too in that case.

Hadn't intended to create a 'north-south' divide - I am a northener after all...  I think a 3-4 day event at a venue that wasn't too rough to put off te vintage boats could be good for attendance and thereby racing and social.  You could even change the burton cup to a long pursuit race (or is that heracy?!)

The Tasars seem to be doing quite well for Nationals entry now.   They have the benefit of being able to get boats from europe for the weekend, and are riding the bow wave of the new rig etc. (don't want to open up a new debate there, particularly as a lightweight team!).  It does bring up the point though that people do look at Nationals attendance for the health of a class, and is an important consideration for many when deciding whether to join.

It seems to me that we have a very active vintage fleet and Northern fleet that largely don't do BW and could provide us with the answer to this problem.  Very simplisticlly, if we make BW attractive to them, the numbers go up towards the 70 mark, people will see the class in a better light. Also, it should encourage more new people into the boat as there should be more of a spread in the fleet due to the different speed of the older boats, and therefore shouldn't discourage so many people due to the competitiveness of the fleet..  Maybe it even encourages more people to replace their boats more frequently, solving the lack of second hand boats.

I'd be very interested to hear what would encourage the vintage guys and the boats from 'up north'  to do a BW...

Sam

Just looked at the results, that is a very competitive fleet with a decent number of current/ex national/world champions.  Well sailed Rick.

My prefernce is for another one at the end rather than Christmas as I'll be back then and it will mean that we can actually qualify...