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[One Life]

Good Morning All.
A question from me. I know that at the Nationals the format of 2019 Open Meetings was discussed, should we have less meetings but 'Bigger' events.......are there any plans afoot?

I'm asking as there was a meeting at Island Barn last night. The club would like to hold an Open for the Phantoms but i've said we need to be careful with the date as this year there was a clash of dates with only one visitor (well done Steve).

If its viable to run a meeting at IBRSC any suggestions for a date.

All those going to Salcombe have a great weekend.....lovely venue......wish I could join you.

Cheers

Nick
'One Life'

[The Belgian]

Hi Nick,
My view is we do away with all region series and have a national series as in each region there is only a small number of travellers so attendance is usually low and you could generally write the results before we start !!
The travellers in each region could race against each other at mainly 2 day events, how much fun could that be. Can you imagine it, people moaning about 20 boats being a low turnout, we could be getting 30 plus.
And also rotating clubs to keep it interesting and fair.
Merlins have a silver tiller, Fireballs a golden dolphin and Phantons can have a platinum knee pad !!!

I'll see if I can get a few ideas at Salcombe

Ivan 1300

[stevepopple]

may I propose a confidential survey (of current Association members) that includes the potential to elect a national events secretary ? 

certainly we do seem to be diluting Open attendances with clashes or closely spaced events in the same region - my guess is that average turnouts would be in single figures incl home boats at most events

[steve ward]

Asva sailor from the midlands we seem to have few events near us. As I have only had a boat for s few months this is my experience so far. I wanted to go to Blithfield which had been moved but not updated on the events website. Im thinking of doing Grafham so I asked if it a one or two day event not yet answered but moved to a different part of the website. Somebody thinks it may he 2 days the events web page says 1 day.

I am very aware that people volunteer to keep the website up to date and lots of other tasks but if you wish to.improve attendance please may we keep the events pagecaccurate.

I know this may sound silly but how about a quick poll as to how many phantoms are at clubs i. At bartley and we have 3 or 4 so to run an event the home club turnout would be quite low

[maxibuddah]

I know that I'm not a current class member but bear with me a little as you never know I may be back.

The trouble I see with Ivan's suggestion is the amount of serious travelling that is involved. People seem to be more reluctant than ever to put the miles in, whether that's down to time, cost or both. Perhaps now is the time to accept that open attendances are lower for the long term, and they've been this low for the last ten years at least and combine them with larger events as many other classes do .That way at least there is a good turnout even though maybe the class racing isn't quite so pure . Better that than 6-7 boats at a club taking up their valuable volunteers time for little return.

I feel this is going to have to be the way for many classes to survive.  While the phantom is a large class the diminishing returns having been suggesting otherwise for quite some time I'm afraid and at some point the class may need to accept it.

For example, would the phantom do better at castle cove for a straight open or as it has been over the last few years as part of the Weymouth regatta? I think the latter is the best way forward

[Jim 1400]

To add to this my preference is single day events to cut down the away time; however the reality is a few two day events would be preferable if it gets the numbers up.
 

[Phil_1193]

To add to this my preference is single day events to cut down the away time;

The other side of the coin is why travel miles, spend hours rigging and de-rigging for a one day event?

Swings and roundabouts, horses and courses etc etc :-)

Its a no win for the regional reps trying to organise  events and you'll never please everyone all of the time, trust me I know from trying to organise the Nationals,  you will never get a definitive answer as to what to and what not to organise - even at the AGM with 40 odd people in the room there wasn't a clear direction on what to do for the big events.

Best bet is to get hold of your regional rep, have a chat with them and see if they will do a straw poll for your region. Then the reps can have a chat and see if they can avoid clashes

For those that are unsure the reps are:-

Eastern - Bob Portway
Midlands - Mike Webster
Southern - Ivan Walsh
Northern - Adam Perry

Website - Clive Morley

There are special facebook pages for the North and Eastern regions if you want to search and have a chat on there too

Bob and Mike have just stood up to the role so please be gentle with them

If you feel your regional rep isn't getting involved enough, then have a chat with them and maybe offer some help, as, trust me, a little offer of help goes along way!!

And just to give an idea, we are trying to arrange the Inlands at Northampton in May next year (when they have space), after discussion at the AGM we have to avoid the bank holiday weekends, so that leaves us a choice of 2 weekends, but now as it turns out one of these is POSH so do we avoid the clash and do it the weekend before the end of May Bank Holiday and risk people not turning up as its close to the BH or put it on the same weekend as the POSH regatta and risk people not turning up because they are there instead??!! That's just one of many problems throughout the year, make it later and it clashes with Creeksea Eastern event that always gets good turnouts, make it earlier and its too close to Easter and bloody freezing

[Ocean Strider]

Having stepped down as the Eastern area rep I think I can have my say with a good degree of insight.

In the East we are very unlikely to travel to say Salcombe and Id expect sailors there to say the same.  What's the problem with a clash of events in such cases?  I'd rather see two small fleets out on the same weekend giving the chance for a "local" event.

I always tried to get a mix of one day and two day events in the series.  Some events require two days to get the best out of them (Creeksea and Southwold this year for example) whilst others suit a single day (Fishers Green).

In short it's about giving sailors a good choice. 

For those that comment on having only a limited number of boats at their club so an Open probably wouldn't work - well you're right!  If you don't make an effort to sail at other clubs and meet fellow sailors don't expect them to suddenly turn up and race at your club for your convenience.

Chatting to fellow sailors at Alton Water this weekend we pretty much agreed that we wanted to continue as we were.  It's worked for us and I believe it would be a complete fail to abandon the regions.

Noting the comment regarding an overall fixtures secretary.  Okay, who's going to do that then?  No one.  It's been tried before several times and only resulted in a reduced number of events.  I actually made a significant effort to work with the other regional reps to ensure the there were no significant clashes and we did pretty well in this regard.  There are only so many weekends in the season and all clubs have limited "slots" available for Open events etc.

At a time when most other classes are looking at regional events then scrapping this would be as mad as not having a Phantom at the Dinghy Exhibition.....