Events - the case for a cull

[Tim L (Guest)]

This has been one of my hobby horses for a while and Simon W's recent post brought it to the forefront of my mind again so I thought I'd look out some numbers on the subject.


Before I start I'd like to say that I know that it's a whole world of hassle to organise even a one day event and the enthusiasm of those who do so is very much appreciated by the class.  


However I think the class is caught between a number of 'hanger on' events that won't lay down and die and an excess of enthusiasm where people are adding yet more events to the circuit without any thought to whether they're really sustainable on the calendar.  Also the concept of reciprocity seems to be lacking, if you're going to moan about people not turning up to an event then at least have attended other peoples.  Even I've managed to attend a Champs in the last 2 years despite being respectively in Aberdeen and France and being out of the country for 6 months of the year.

So to the numbers, I've looked at 7 other classes of popular hiking dinghies, I've counted the number of events
 they have on their calendar (including any handicap events), and then looked at their nationals attendance (07) as a rough indication of class health and then their maximum and minimum attendance at opens for the 08 season so far which I think is a good measure of the health of their circuits.  All the numbers are somewhat approximate as all the fixtures lists are in different formats, not all race reports have full results and my eyes started to hurt reading the Enterprise site before I could count all their events...

Class               Events                Nationals 07              Open 08 (max/min)

Tasar                  9                         46                            6/4
Scorpion              19                       56                            27/??

Lark                    20                       58                            45/12
Firefly                  24                       55                            32/30 (15 for singlehanded event)
RS200                 40                       126                           64/22
Merlin Rocket        49                       79                            37/11
Enterprise             60+                     56                            23/16
National 12           66                       36                            20/0


So the Tasars and RS200s are pretty anomalous, the one suffering from the small size of its class and the other boosted by significant financial/advertising clout.  But it's interesting to note that even with a big pool of active boats the RS200s don't go overboard with their circuit.

The Merlin result is probably misleading as I've included all their vintage events.  The number of 'normal' opens is probably lower by at least 10.   Interestingly, even the Merlins can't find a lot of people to go to Ranelagh...

Ents seem pretty similar, however I'd guess that their numbers are quite consistent for most opens due to having established club fleets at the places they visit.  Something that - with a few exceptions - we don't have.


So what these results seem to indicate (possibly with a klaxon horn and lots of red flashing lights) is that having masses of events (especially one dayers) is very bad for open meeting attendance and probably has knock on effects in terms of poor nationals attendance.

Or more simply: Less is More (within reason)

More likely to have a good turn out
More likely to have a great social
More likely to have good racing
More likely to make a good impression on the host club/potential 12 sailors
More impact in sailing media race reports
More time club sailing to promote/build fleets
More likely to improve BW attendance

So my proposal would be that the open circuit is limited to 15 events total (the Gill series to stay as it is).  4 events per area, 3 to count.  Add Burton Week, Salcombe/NW Norfolk/Bass Week, Vintage events and the usual round of winter handicap events and that should give a sub-25 event calendar.  The main crowd pleasers (Salcombe, Harwich, Northhampton, Bristol etc.) would stay in on a permanent basis but the other events would rotate year on year to take in new venues (I know some clubs want an event every year or not at all but unless they draw the numbers I don't see why they should stay in).

Events should be 2 dayers in all cases with a reduced entry for those only able to make 1 day (but only by pre-entry to stop the entry fees bartering that's gone on at times when some people have decided they didn't like the weather/wetsuit was too smelly etc.)

So thats my little rant for today - I may well get a few backs up here, but I think this is a very important piece of the puzzle to improving the health of the class.

Thoughts?

Tim N2822

[Mikey C]

I dont normally say this, but I think you have a point...
And with facts too! wow - are you feeling OK Timmy?

[Tim L (Guest)]

No sure there's a monopoly on factual arguments...seem to remember an argument along the lines of 'Assymetrics are more than 100% efficient...'.   Perpetual motion machine Mr C??? ;D

[Chadders]

An interesting thought and no doubt valid to a point.  My initial issue is with dropping/reducing one day open meetings.  Two days are not always practical.  My crew can get away for a days sailing but her family would not be happy for her to go off all weekend I am sure, the same applies to those of us who sail with other peoples kids etc.  I have dropped out of a 2 day event this weekend for this very reason as I can only make 1 day and feel it is unfair to risk cocking up the results of someone who is sailing both days and hence can qualify where I can not.  If the one day open meetings dissapear then my sailing will be mainly at our club.  Having said that I am not against a reduction in events based on the level of support. 
Interestingly Frampton had 5 vintage boats out last weekend despite loosing one which was not finished in time and one due to injury!  The following day they had a South West meeting and the entries were one vintage boat from the North who stayed over (Brian Herring) and Brian Kitching's two boats cos he lent one to another Frampton member.  My guess is that Frampton will not be keen to run another SW meeting but will run a 1 day vintage meeting.  Howard C      N2, N2266 and N3356 in support of one day opens.

[THG]

I was one of the nonp-attendees for Frampton despite it being close - my boat was not and still is not finished.  Tried a couple of other boats to borrow but also not ready (bit early in season maybe for some AC boats).  I know 2 other people who were going to Frampton but were ill (they attended last year).  Appreciate all the efforts Brian went to - but perhaps in this case it may be better to hold one combined event and take results out seperatly (as we plan to do for South Cerney).  Yes I feel very guilty about non attending plus there were other issues to sort out at home too - trying to balance all these out esp. for a non sailing partners can be difficult.
One of the issues for the 12s is the way the boats seem to be spread out so thinly geographically with one or two hot spots within each area.  SW is pretty big and so limiting the events still means lots of travel and can we all afford the time / cost of doing that these days??  Maybe we need a few carefully chosen events / dates as you suggest but fitting that into Clubs calendars is not always possible.
I'm not sure what the answer is - do we poll the class ahead of each calendar year and ask them which will they attend?  Then events change...some out of our control (weather) and some not (family commitments / work etc) that still affect ability to attend.
Maybe there are too many events and if some of the 'local' events are too close to the main Gill how does this impact the attendance?  Some of us may only prefer to commit to the big events and try to attend local, whilst others may feel less inclined to mix it up at the Gill events and prefer to stay local.
We all have our own views and personal circumstances / commitments which clearly alters how we wish to spend our leisure time and cash.
The numbers though so make interesting reading and ulitmately the Class needs to deceide what they want and then actually attend the events.  Why 0 as the lowest - surley that would have been cancelled!!
Yes I'm one of the tardy ones who has not made it onto the water yet in 2008 but hope to make amends later in the year - MAY even get to BW (or part of it...).
Interesting debate to commence......
P.S forgot Frampton one other planned attendee broke the front off his boat in the gales...
 

[Antony (Guest)]

All good stuff, and a worthy subject for debate as there are plenty of pros and cons and so lots of varied opinion.  The good news is that we have 3-4 months to discuss this on/at various forums.
I have serious doubts about the quality of the data that Tim is using, but suspect that the 'message' such as there is one is still broadly correct.  I do think that we need to keep in mind what is cause and what is effect....
Happy to discuss these matters further, i have in the past discussed them in Committee (most years), at the AGM (some years) and with a beer at a sailing club (several times most years).
Antony

[Tim L (Guest)]

Howard you seem to be saying you went to an event that was essentially a 2 day event for the vintage boats and a 1 day event for the rest and no non-vintage visitors turned up...I'm not sure how that's an argument for 1 day events?

While it is difficult for some people to make two days I think it ony accounts for a small number of those who do travel.  I've done a lot of the circuit since 2000 and I can't remember a 1 day open that was really well supported.  It's not that we shouldn't consider people who can only make 1 day at all, but rather that we should attempt to attract rather than accomodate.  2 day events with 20+ boats, good socials at good waters are more likely to be attractive both to present attendees and those who don't travel very often especially if they're a bit more infrequent.  1 dayers can be accomodated as mentioned above and maybe by providing enough races on the sunday for them to qualify for the event.  I don't think worry that people will be upset by them appearing in the results is really valid - after all we allow race by race entry of Burton Week.

The class also falls into the trap of taking what people say they want to be what they'll actually turn up for.  As an example every couple of years Starcross gets into a flap about the 'need for fleet racing' to boost club race attendance.  Classes and enforcement are discussed and 'fleet racing days' are put on the calendar.  Without fail these fleet races usually attract far tinier entries than the handicap races that precede them...  Last weekend after handicap race comprising of about 30-40 monos, there were a  whole 4 Merlins for the fleet race...


Counting against 1 day events and a huge open circuit is also the present economic realities, people are finding the rest of life more expensive particularly with petrol looking like it may hit £1.50 by the end of the year.  Travelling a long distance to sail for 1 day against 5-10 boats is unlikely to attract people when they could simply race at their club.  Had I been able to collect my 12 on saturday last weekend then this is exactly the decision I would have made with regards to Frampton.  While Brian has been brilliant in putting in the miles over the past few years it just didn't make sense to go through the rigmarole of packing up the boat, paying for petrol and entries to sail against a small/non-existent fleet on a lake.

Kean, I do see what you were trying to do with the opens but I think it was flawed.  What happens is that people go to the small event, don't have a particularly great time and therefore don't go to the big event the next week as they've done as much travelling as they're willing to.  If you don't offer them lots of small events then they're more likely to make the extra effort to go to a big onea bit further away.
The 'coincidence'  of all those people not being able to come to Frampton is pretty much what I experienced when I was Midlands rep.  The people usually never had any intention of coming.  Olton and Earlswood were alway like that and I tried to get rid of them off the calendar to no avail.  I see Olton is still on the calendar (why, WHY)...
With regards to the south west, my own preference would be for Bristol and Salcombe as regulars and then 2 other events from something like Saltash/Roadford/Starcross/Lyme/Weymouth/South Cerney.  Changing venues each year.  Nothing west of Plymouth as (sorry James and Emma) with the best will in the world people will just not travel that far into cornwall for an open.

Antony, I'm sure you're right about the data.  I'm sure most classes hide their poor turnouts.  Nationals entries were from Y&Y.  AS I said the fixtures lists are difficult to compare...but 3 times the number of events of other classes is still pretty significatnt.  I'm willing to put money on it being a cause rather than effect.

[Jane Wade]

Hi
Tim's data on the Scorpion class looks pretty spot on - they have only had one open meeting so far and they got 27 boats to a smallish pond in the midlands.  I also know that 56 for the Nationals is right and they will probably top that this year.
Everyone has pressures on their time and I find it difficult to fit in more that about seven open meetings in anyway and then it is a case of looking at those where the attendance will be best - usually the Gill series.  I think there has already been a fair size cull of open meetings since I was Chair in 2000 when there was often a choice of venues every weekend and so far that doesn't really seem to have increased the attendees. 
This is a symptom of a class needing rejuvenation rather than the cause of it methinks!
Jane 

[Antony (Guest)]

Tim,
You really should try to make it to Grafham one year.  While i agree that it is weakened by the lack of a social it has often (always/usually) provided the best sail of the year and one of the top 2-3 turnouts of the year.  It has always been a one-day event and not suffered for it.
SYC bar tomorrow night?  Mine is a Doom (as they say down there).
Antony

[James Taylor]

No Tim I think you are right we have both booked the time off for Salcombe but other things have stopped us attending which is a real shame Emma really really wanted to sail at Salcombe and I did too,
 
Saltash/Roadford/Starcross and Bristol are good but for us the others are as you say are to out of the way!!!!
 
We have done Grafham and I very much enjoyed it but we did have time off just to bimbull up and see family on the way. I like one day meeting as for us we travel or try to with the cost of fuel might not be going to far !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Hope to see you all soon.
 
James and Emma
Way Down West

[Tim L (Guest)]

Hmm, yes Doom Bar, mmmm

Actually I did attend the first Grafham Gill series (2004?), it was where I picked up my recurring knee problems but the turnout was good.  However that year and this year it was a pseudo-2 dayer with another event on the other day.  It also is pretty central between the London/East Coast and Northern fleets, has good transport and is known to have good turnouts all of which rarely apply to other river/pond 1 dayers.

Kath and I started our 12 sailing during Janes charmanship - if there was a cull perhaps it wasn't far enough even then.  I remember the enthusiasm engendered by all these interesting sounding venues on the race card and then the disappointment of finding out that the class was nowhere near as active as the calendar seemed to suggest.  Looe sounded a really great place to go until we learnt that only 3 boats had attended in 1999 and finding out that had we gone to it in 2000 we would have been the only boat.  Even if too many events is not the cause badly attended events still affect peoples perception of the class.

A lot of replacement events have crept back on to replace the Elys, Looes, Burtons and Beestons.  Rationalisation and consolidation of fleets on a small number of events is - IMHO - one of the more obvious and cheap options to try to increase turnouts.  Less hassle for area reps and an overworked event co-ordinator too.  I don't really believe that the committee has any better ideas at the moment.

Be interesting to know whether a similar plan is partly responsible for the resurgence of Larks and Fireflies - anyone with the experience in those classes?

[Roly Mo]

Good post Tim, well done for starting what I am sure will be an interesting thread. 
 
Well done you for your Burton attendances, but please recognise that BW just isn’t a big draw for some of us.  If it continues to be based in the South and is a week of hard sailing North West Norfolk Week will always win hands down for me.
There are events which stay in the programme ‘because we’ve always gone there’ and which result in howls of anguish from some sailors if you try to remove them.   Having experienced trying to organise meetings at clubs which don’t have active N12’s I would remove them from the programme as it is a real pain trying to find anyone who’s willing to take charge of them.  That would mean goodbye Filey, Derwent and Grimwith from the Northern Series, and, very regretfully,  East Lothian from the Scottish Series but watch out for the squeals of anguish from those who enjoy big/open water sailing.  I suspect that Tynemouth will have low numbers again this year, exacerbated by allowing another meeting to be moved to directly clash with it, and in our case a clash with an event which Ellie is keen to sail in at our home club.  If I want to keep her motivated my wish for some sea sailing may have to be put aside for this year (sorry Howards).
This year the number of events in the Northern series has increased again.  This was with the support and encouragement of the majority of those who attended the fleet meeting at Ripon SC and there were lots of promises made to attend various meetings.  The proof of the pudding will be in the eating â€" let’s see how many boats turn up at South Windermere on 17 May and at Scaling Dam the following week.  With so many meetings to choose from, only 4 required to qualify and a daughter who is wanting to sail with me in the Mirror we have taken the view that this year we will try to qualify for the series, and know which 4 we will definitely do, there are a few more which we may do if time and the diary permits and the rest are write-offs.  Had there been less meetings we would have been more inclined to try and support them all.  With so many to choose from it was too easy to knock a few off. 
So where are we going and why?  Newburn (February and November) are definites.   Interestingly these 2 meetings just used to be ‘events’, not qualifiers.   Our other 2 definite Old Spice qualifiers will be South Windermere and Ripon.  We will be at Hykeham with the Vintage boat because the summer event was great fun last year and we hope Ellie will enjoy crewing Xanthus at this year’s event.  We also have our usual Pie Boy weekend booked with Ice Cream Man and his clan for Hunstanton.  We would have taken Xanthus to TVSC for the Vintage meeting but it’s been moved and we can’t do the replacement date, and would have liked to have gone to Aldeburgh but it clashes with South Windermere. 
We will support all the Scottish Series meetings except ELYC this year (clashes with a club event which Ellie has on her radar) as long as I can find myself crews â€" partly because we are organising the series and also because there are some wonderful places to sail on the Scottish circuit this year which fit our ‘family weekend’ profile.  As for Gill, if I qualify so be it.  If I don’t so be it.  It isn’t a great draw for me and I won’t be going out of my way to get sufficient meetings under my belt.  I guess the key message in this is that we have picked events on the basis of where we want to sail, not on the basis of competing for a place within a series (although I'll be fighting Homer to the death for the Lairwell Trophy!).  I am glad that Salcombe, Harwich, Northampton and Bristol are crowd pleasers for Tim but (with the exception of Northampton) they leave me cold and I can’t see us ever travelling to Salcombe, Harwich or Bristol to compete.
The Scottish series is currently 5 meetings, with 2 to count.  If we up the number to qualify we will struggle to get qualifiers.  We would support reducing the number of meetings in the Northern series but with only 5 meetings as per your proposal getting a good mix of river, inland, open and sea sailing would be nigh on impossible and would, I suspect, end up with no-one being happy. 

I'd firmly oppose insistence on 2 day events.  Many clubs who offer meetings now won’t make water available for a 2 day event (Ripon certainly wouldn’t â€" and we had 22 boats at our one day meeting last year).  We used to have a number of 2 days events in the Northern series but found that support wasn’t there for this format and gradually nearly all of these meetings have moved to a 1 day format.  The only 2 day events in the northern circuit this year are Filey (where we piggy back on to their Regatta) and Yorkshire Ouse (which only has one race, late afternoon, on the Saturday which tends to attract local boats rather than travellers, who turn up and qualify by doing all the races on the Sunday).  Two day events are a pain if you don’t have a family member crewing for you and are expensive because of needing overnight accommodation (admittedly less so for those of use with motorhomes or tents).  
I will be very interested in seeing how this thread develops â€" if the thrust is to move to 2 day events in the South there’ll be a double bottomed boat for sale as well as the Cheshire Cat.

RM

[MikeDay]

There are lots of issues here and I might comment on others later, but one thing to keep in mind is that the Twelve annual events calendar is not just a calendar of events laid on by the Class.  Burton Week is owned by the Class, so is the Gill series, although it depends on clubs to play along.  However, the summer weeks are independent in their own right, as are all the open meetings.  The Class, via its regional committees or reps, organises the series (Thames, Northern etc) but each of the open meetings is laid on by clubs.  What you therefore have in the Twelve calendar is a compilation of all this lot, but it's not up to the Class to take a centralist "we decide what stays and what goes" view. 
 
I rather like the fact that some meetings in the Thames Area have trophies that have been raced for over more than 50 years.  I happen to like going round to lots of different waters and helping to bring the odd burst of new energy to small but determined local fleets (eg we're currently seeing a bit of a resurgence at Twickenham).  And I don't want small inland clubs who show generous hospitality to the visiting Twelve fleet every year to feel that they're not included.  In the end, the market will decide.  If people don't travel, then the clubs will stop organising meetings.  However, I don't want to be party to any committee decision that says - "you're in but you lot aren't".  And I certainly don't want to get to all 2-day meetings - that just takes no account of the different domestic circumstances that people have.
 
Open meeting and Burton Week attendances are in the end a reflection of overall activity - more people sailing more gets more people out on the water everywhere.
 
Mike D
N3496

[Tim L (Guest)]

Bernard,
thanks for a very comprehensive post!
I should clarify I only used the examples as they're events I'm familiar with.  I'm sure events like Ripon/Yeadon fill the slot as opens which attract a strong following year on year for the northern area.  


My thrust simply put is less but better (in attendance and socials) events, events that are actually worth travelling that bit more for.  
 

I'd be happy to do a couple of northern area events if I knew they were likely to have a decent turnout (and weren't pond/river events).  I've been to Tynemouth and Bass week before and they're superb venues.  I would happily make the effort to attend if I knew the turnout was say 20+ and it was a 2 day event to justify the distance travelled (and they had as good a barbeque as last time), but this will only happen if there were no other events clashing with it.


I'm with you with on BW, though that's a whole other can of worms.  Personally I'd favour a long weekend which would make it easier to take to venues 'perceived' as less attractive (i.e. East coast/anywhere north of London...:X).  It would then allow people more time to go to their most local 'holiday' week which might rejuvenate the Bass week 12s and give us some decent fleets at NW Norfolk and Salcombe.


The 'need for a mix of events' is the same as the 'need to go miles offshore for huge long races to have a fair champs' attitude.  Part delusions of past grandeur, part what a small core of regulars want. There are 300ish association members and perhaps the same again (or even more) actively 12 sailing at club level.   The present priority is to simply get more of these people sailing in class events and engaged with the class - finding the best sailor (in an ever decreasing pool at present) is the last thing we should be worried about.


A lot of the restricted waters and open sea events attract pretty small entries.  The real turnouts come to open, flat water venues - big lakes/reservoirs and estuaries. These are the events to bring in the club level 12 sailors and get them enthused about opens and being part of the class.  Restricted water events are too dull/local knowledgy while big wave sailing is pretty terrifying for someone inexperienced sailing with a small child as crew.


In the same way that I'm not suggesting (as Mike put it) 'you can have an event and you can't' but rather '...you can't this year'.  The mix would , with rotating events, still get covered.  Just not every year with the present tiny entries.  
I do very definitely think that the class should be taking a centralising approach to it's calendar, presently it's pretty much anarchy. The market has already decided - any non-Gill river event attracts a sub 10 boat entry while the average 12 sailor is increasing in age and decreasing in numbers fast.  If that isn't the market sending us a message...  Interesting that most of the 12 youth side has migrated to 200s/Larks/Merlins to sail open water events with big socials.


'If people don't travel, then the clubs will stop organising meetings.' - except for the river/pond clubs who have little to lose by holding an open every year even if it only attracts 5 boats.  They clutter up the calendar, dilute the fleet at other events and so we lose events at active clubs with good waters as they can't justify the expense of rescue boats and catering for a small entry, not to say forcing their large, active membership to miss out on a weekends club sailing.  Thus we end up with more restricted water events, less people travel and so on...


Time for bed...

[Kevin]

Is this a volunteer to organise the fixture list for next year?
Kevin