In my sailing travels, I am usually telling friends and skippers how cool it would be to have a profitable, successful sailing event in the United States. One that would generate public and media interest. Usually, they bark back at me that in order to market sailing to the masses, you have to remove parts of sailing to make it easier to understand, or to match other concerns. They feel that while making these changes might increase attention, it would change the sport as they love it and would reduce competition and growth by "dumbing it down" for the average public.

I disagree. Even if a "subset" of the sport was created with simpler rules, simpler courses, and perhaps simpler boats; it wouldn't detract from the greatness that is the rest of the sport. In fact, it would only bolster it. If you add 100,000 fans to the sport, even if they come for different reasons than you might like, even if only 5% of them end up actually participating and enjoying the classic sailing sport, that's still 5,000 fans that have joined the sport. Plus 95,000 fans that are going to be pumping money and interest into the sport.

At this point, any positive media for sailing is good media. I just get so frustrated when people try to convince me that by adapting areas of the sport to accomidate new fans, we are disrespecting the rest of the sport. There are many sailing events that generate profits and do well publically, there just aren't any in the U.S. As I've said before, the iShares Cup is the best event the sport has seen in a long time. The VOR is finishing up its most successful run ever and they are passing this country over. It's not about changing the sport to attract new fans, it's about selling the sport to the average fan. I've yet to see a US event really try and accomplish that. Do you think we should reach out to the public or wait for them to find our sport?