I have another idea. Hah, you’re all in trouble now.
Several of us have noticed some problems with fleet sailing of Footys. The primary one being that many Footys don’t sail at the same ponds yet. To solve this problem I propose the “virtual fleet”.
You team up with 2 other skippers and declare yourself a fleet. Geographic proximity is irrelevant. It could be your buddies at the local pond or friends from far off lands. (Larger fleets will come with a larger general Footy population. Give it some time.)
The fleet members make internet course runs and record a total time/average time. The runs should be made within the same week. Virtual events could even be organized around several fleets sailing in the same week.
Submit the time to the scoreboard. (Ok, I guess we need to get the scoreboard started. We can start by posting times in a forum thread and I’ll try to summarize it for all.)
Profit. Just kidding. Bragging rights will go to the best fleet. In the spirit of fun, dominant fleets will disband after a short reign. After a while, we could use the solo times scoreboard to create divisions among the skippers, sort of a handicapping system. A fleet shall have equal numbers of “A” skippers, “B” skippers and “C” skippers.
When the class grows to sufficient numbers we can combine virtual fleets and material fleets.
At first sight it’s crazy. At a second look, however…
What does it achive? In terms of high grade competrition, absolutely nothing. In terms of fun - possibly quite a lot for a bit. If fleet races are ever to get going, there have to be more Footys in one place. The record number in the USA seems to be 5 (including 1 DNS) and the 18 boat fleet in UK does not seem to be thriving.
Anything that provides a carrot for people (often people who no very little about sailing, I suspect) to become enthusiastic Footy sailors can do nothing but good. It may be a gimmick, it probably won’t last, but it might well help to get things moving.
Did you know that, acording to AMYA official figures less than a month old, there are only 17 registered Footys in the USA?
I’m sure that this is a result of unpaid subscriptions, etc but it hardly indicates a thriving class organisation waiting to burgeon out into huge fleets.
Come on guys: if we want this thing to grow, we’ve got to DO something!
John, I think it’s a great idea. Sound like a lot of fun, and encourages the sense of international community that we talked of in another thread.
Angus, those recently published AMYA numbers are not up to date. Our class is growing, not shrinking, and we now have 30 skippers who have registered 49 boats.
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