David Matthews
Organising family, work, and crew for a five day National Championship event has proved to be a challenge for me this year.
I would be interested to hear member’s views on a possible change to the National Championship format. Options could include holding a four day event over a bank holiday weekend for example.
Reducing the time away from family and work commitments would make life easier for all concerned and hopefully increase participation.
What do you think?
Depending on the level of interest associated with this bulletin, I shall be willing to make a proposal at the next AGM.
David Matthews
White Magic
Sam Abbott
My veiw is that it should stay as a 1 week event as most other class nationals are the same and also big regattas such as cowes week and ramsgate week are 5 days.
i know its hard to get time off work but if its treated as a weeks holiday then its great.
to do it i in a long weekend would reduce number of races or lengths of races.
and one more thing bring it back to medway as we have around 20-22 sonatas in the class.
csguy
Hello
Just for information the Nationals for the next few years have locations confirmed, so a space for potentially going back to Medway would not be available until at least 2010, more likely 2011.
As the fleets are all over the UK it is good to move the Nationals around, so the next few years plan out as follows:
2006 Dabchicks
2007 Sunderland
2008 Strangford Lough
2009 Poole (TBC)
2010 Possibly Scotland
However if you wanted to hol an eastern areas that would be Ok 
Best wishes
Catherine Hartley
Events and Publicity, Sonata Association
Gareth Martel
Hi,
Really interesting to read the chat about the future of the nationals. I have to say from our point of view we thought the length of the event was spot on. To be honest if it had been a long weekend or something similar we almost definitely wouldn’t have made the journey, as it was it was definitely worth the journey. Surely the main reason to change the format would be to encourage more entries, and with such a high level of entries this year it would be hard to believe that it would make a big difference, surely better to have 27 sonatas racing 5 days than 30 racing 3?
Also worth saying I spoke to a couple of boats at the nationals who had considered coming to the Irish nationals, but when they looked into it and found it was only 5 races over three days they decided it was too far to go.
One idea would surely be to have the event start on a saturday, with the practice race on the friday night, this might cut the number of days off work (for all the unlucky majority who arent students!!), down to as little as three, without sacrificing the length of the event?!
Anyway, awesome time had this year, initially wasnt sure if I could afford to keep the boat for next season, no way Im selling her now!!!!
Gareth Martel
“Cinnabar”
nmclure
My understanding is that the nationals format is advisory only and that organisers can do the nationals as they see fit.
I reckon a long weekend or 4 day weekend might be more popular – at my home in any rate! Hard to justify a week away without the kids.
My preference is for shorter more often windward leewards and I am not so interested in cruising racing. Sunderland Northern championships last year were exellent in fitting 10 races into one weekend. As I’ve said elsewhere – that might be tiring over longer than a weekend but why not something in-between? At Tarbert Scottish Series the Race officer had the flexibility to do “not more than 3” races a day, And in fact did 3 a day from Friday to Monday leaving just one short race on Monday to complete the 10 race series. We could easily have done another race on Monday – heck we are there to race! – but the SI’s don’t allow it. The nationals should allow up to 4 a day (if it’s an excellent wind and the finishes are at the leeward end) – but in practice would probably never do more than 3 and on less interesting days – of course – just do 1 or 0.
So my suggestion (to add to David’s) is that the SIs for the nationals should be opened out to
1. give more flexibility to the dates (to allow a long weekend event) and
2. to allow for MORE races in the series (if the weather is good)
See you at Dabchicks.
Neil McLure
“So…”