Well historically, looking at the Miracle UK Nationals attendance (see below) it's been getting kinda lame... just scraping 30 boats in the last few years.. that ain't good...
BUT....
This year, maybe because of the £50 discount before the end of Jan '08, or maybe because the class is having a resurgence (has news of me and the kids coming out to play in 2008 stirred the masses??), there looks like there's a massive upturn in the attendance...
Current confirmed entries are 52
That's great news, I'm sure that this might be a 10 year high, right up there in the 60's! It's gonna be one hell of a year for the Miracle class this year, and you Miracle guys... you better believe I'm up for it this year :-)
Oh yeh, Enterprises... how many you got guaranteed to rack up at your event, any idea??
5 comments:
There you go again with another bloody up the Miracle rant...
Sorry, couldn't resist that. Now we're even.
Seriously that's very good news. It's great to read about a class that has found the secret to growing back again after a relative decline. And good luck to you and the kids at the Nationals.
Sounds good! I would love to do the Enterprise nationals but it just costs too much. I nearly did it in 2006 but things went south on that so I have resigned myself to just local sailing until I can afford it.
Thanks Tillerman and Tim for your comments...
It's VERY interesting to see what classes can achieve when they try to stimulate a strong background fleet into coming to the fore and doing the Nationals.
I'd be very interested to get a feel for the stats behind the type of entry i.e. Miracle old-hats that havent done Nats for a while or never done them before versus new fleet members versus regulars...
Yeah, it would be good to hear more about what the Miracle class is doing to stimulate the growth. Is it only the discount for early registration or is there other stuff going on?
We need our fearless investigative reporter Ant to ferret out the truth and report it, so other classes can learn from the Miracles?
The big thing that's been done to stimulate the class recently is product innovation.
We have a mark 4 design with centre sheeting, spinnaker bags and redesigned decks and cockpit. just looks so much more up-to-date and fits with what's happening in other, more modern classes.
Also we now have an all plastic boat, which will hopefully encourage non-dIYers like me.
The Miracle will never be a sexy boat but it's an absolute winner for parent-child combinations and youngster learning.
Ant is going to have his work cut out to win club races this year with some other really talented dads competing at Draycote Water.
... and for me? I just hope that I'll be able to still see your transomes at the windward mark!
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