Maudlin musings about multihulls...

Hi Folks -

As I have become more and more involved with sailing over the years, I've gotten more and more into the volunteer side - putting together and running races locally, and also going to US SAILING and NAHCA meetings to see what's going on nationally. I've been helping put together the Multihull National Championship for the last several years. I joined a local yacht club to help support the summer youth programs and spend a little bit of money where there is a concentration of resources dedicated to providing sailors a good time. Oh, and the YC has the best beer prices on the beach...

At the US SAILING meeting in October, I left the Saturday social event alone, intending to grab one of the shuttles back to the hotel and crash - it was a special treat for me to be out of town with no 2 AM baby feeding on the schedule and I was looking forward to a full night's sleep. I got on a shuttle that was brimming over with happy conversations about (whaddyaknow) my favorite hobby - I sat next to a couple of people that introduced themselves and, lo and behold, they were from the Gulf Coast, too, and were members of the executive board of the Gulf Yachting Association (GYA), a collection of southern YCs from Texas to South Florida. After answering some questions about where and what I sail, they asked me why the multihull representatives had stopped coming to their meetings. They were genuinely interested in what was going on with my local fleet, and offered any help we might need – venues, resources, volunteers, parties… They asked me to come to the January meeting in Mobile, AL, to talk about multihulls and what’s going on with our fleets. So I did.

I was floored – I can’t tell you how many people came up and shook my hand, saying it had been five or six years since they’d had someone from multihulls come to a meeting. And, I swear, every one of them had sailed on a cat early on, from Hobie 16s to, no kidding, the Sizzler. So I sat in on the one-design council meeting, and when it came time for a multihull report, I said a few words.

I told them first that there had been a Youth Multihull Championship at Fort Walton YC, and that there is a youth team from Pensacola going to the ISAF Worlds in Poland to represent the USA. I told them there were nine teams from the GYA states in the Multihull Championship in 2003, three finishing in the top five. I told them there were pocket fleets from Galveston to Key Largo organizing and hosting events ranging from Wednesday night races to the US SAILING Qualifiers and Championship. I talked a bit about the A Class Nationals at Pontchartrain YC, the caliber of multihull sailors, and how many boats we saw on the start lines of different level events. They let me go on for a while, and then started asking questions – these folks were sincerely interested. My favorite question, heard again at the bar later, was “can we come if we can find a boat to use?” Hell, yes. And now there’s a multihull schedule on the GYA website - http://www.gya.org/.

Now I’ve seen some of the chatter on the old forum about YCs and elitism and whatnot. I guess a skeptic would say, “Of course they’re interested – they want your money.” I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s not the case. Nobody ever asked if I was a member of a club, nor have any of the YC events in the region required membership for entry. I can absolutely say that regattas are not a source of profit. Every single YC event I have been involved with has had the same theme from organizers – “We’re just looking to break even for the weekend… or come as close to it as we can.”

So what’s my point after 653 words and seven paragraphs? Just thinking out loud, I guess… seems like the average age of sailors on the beach and at the YC keeps going up proportionately with the passage of time. Seems like there’s an untapped resource for beach cats available. Seems like there are a lot of monohull sailors that would jump on a cat if you led them to water. I know two National Champion skippers that are actively poaching YC dingy programs for good crew.

I decided some time ago it was going to take more from me than going to regattas as crew to keep this whole thing going, so little by little I’ve been getting deeper into it. Works for me, but I know it’s not for everyone. US SAILING is having their Spring meeting in Mobile, AL – the organizers went to a lot of trouble to put all the multihull meetings on Saturday, March 14th so anybody who wants to come doesn’t have to take off a weekday from work. One thing I’ve learned in a short time – it’s the folks who show up that make the decisions. Please consider coming - http://www.ussailing.org/events/meet04Sp/index.htm. On the Multihull Council we have a running joke that isn’t necessarily just funny – if we could just get a few more multihull folks excited and involved, we could take over the national governing body of sailing. What would you change?