IDEAS FOR CLASS DEVELOPMENT
by Steve Vurno
Recently I had the pleasure of attending the spring meeting in
Chicago. The Des Plaines fleet organized a productive and
enjoyable weekend. I'm certain that their effort and
hospitality was appreciated by all those who attended. The
opportunity to meet with old friends and to make new ones, once
again reminded me what a special group of people the Rebel class
is. I feel fortunate to have grown up socializing, sailing,
and racing in a Rebel. I would like my children (when I
have them) to have the same opportunity, but this will only
happen if we continue to promote our class. In this article
I would like to talk about some of my ideas for increasing class
membership.
The Rebel Rabble is our greatest asset for class
development. However, it is under utilized. The
Rabble is primarily used as a means of communication among the
membership. Communication is vital to the survival of our
organization, but it is my opinion that we should expand the role
of the Rabble to ACTIVELY promote the Rebel and our class.
Four times a year the Rabble is mailed to 250 people all over the
country, many of whom already own a Rebel. Only a fraction
of these people are active in the national organization or attend
the national regatta. These are the people who we should
first focus on. We should use the Rebel Rabble as a forum for
advertising our class. The Rebel Rabble ought to be a
concerted marketing effort as well as a means of
communication. Are there any members with experience in
advertising who could make contributions in this respect?
The National Championship Regatta is vital for the success of our
organization. Without it we are no more than a collection of
disparate individual fleets. It is largely at the Nationals
where we develop our unity of spirit and purpose. However,
participation in the National Regatta has been declining
steadily. We need to increase participation by attracting those
people who have never attended a Nationals. How do we attract
such people? Most people who are actively involved and
successful in racing will eventually attend with a minimum of
encouragement. Our target group would seem to be those who have
never raced or have not been terribly successful in racing.
The first thing we can do to attract such people is provide
social activities. We need to stress the fun on and
off the water in promoting the Nationals. We also
need to communicate that one need not be an expert racer to
participate in the Nationals. We could even offer a free
racing "clinic" the weekend before the start of the
Nationals. This could be an on the water clinic where the
participants learn the basics (or more depending on their ability
level) of sailboat racing. If we offer such a clinic we may
attract some of our unattached (to a fleet) members who have
never raced or have limited racing experience. I am
confident that if we get them to attend one Nationals, they will
attend many. Maybe they will even be inspired to start a
new fleet if there is not one in their area.
One last idea- the creation of another national sanctioned
regatta. Perhaps Great Lakes Championship or
Atlantic Coast Championship would be an appropriate designation
(or alternating between the two as the regatta shifts from the
East to the Midwest). This could be a two or three day
national regatta; sort of a mini-Nationals. I believe such
a regatta would promote class unity as well as offer some darn
fine racing. Also, we may give some members who are scared
of "The Nationals", or hesitant to spend five vacation
days racing, a taste of what a Rebel national regatta is
like.
The Rebel is a great boat and, taken as a whole, the people
making up the class association are the finest I've met. It
is my hope that the Rebel class will grow and thrive.
Hopefully, my ideas will be a start.