In the Autumn of 2022, when Rob Allen was our new chairman and there was some new fresh members on the MROA committee, there was an ‘away day’ at Upper Thames SC to thrash out a strategy for the future of the class. Some of the many challenges that we, and the rest of the world, faced were (and still are) climate change and cost of living.
One of the ideas put forward was a reduction in the number of Silver Tiller events. The idea was to reduce the number of driving miles needed to compete and increase the entry in the events that we had. All laudable aims. It was decided to try this and review the policy. That review is due this Autumn.
I am not sure that this policy is working. The Silver Tiller events are reduced to 12 (from 15 and traditionally 21) and there are suggestions they should be reduced more. The entries for individual events are not great and the number of qualifying helms (and crews for the Silver Pole now) is significantly lower.
Of course, mainly as result of the outcry from traditional Merlin clubs that lost their treasured Silver Tiller events, the new regional circuits were set up, and I think that policy is going well.
One idea that I have heard is that all the regional series events should be included in the Silver Tiller calendar. Personally I rather like this idea, or something like it. I think this would increase the number of qualifiers for Silver Tiller and Pole and it would mean anyone could qualify without travelling so much. Also anyone could choose more of the venues that they prefer without those being chosen for them by the sailing sub-committee.
These are only my ideas and I know that personally It probably won’t make much difference as the inevitable march of age is likely to limit my participation. But I have been involved in this iconic series which I think is at the heart of our amazing class for a long time and I don’t want to see it reduced in value.

Hi Pat
I agree i dont think it worked as well as was first thought. On paper it looked good but in practice the format has not worked well. As you say some iconic venues lost and not a fantastic support for new ones. Plus there seems to be a lot of two day meetings on concsecutive weekends which isnt going to help with numbers with the cost of accomadation , fuel etc.
I think your suggestion of including the regional events in someway has leggs and could cut down on the travelling.
I did suggest to Caroline that i though the new format would actually reduce the silver tiller entries as helms would prefer to stay local which i think has been the case certainly in my case it has.
Like you the years are marching on and my get up and go to get up with the sparrows and travel to sail a ST meeting is reducing year by year.
There seems to be a new influx of youths coming to class which is good for the future of the class, it would be intresting to hear how they see the ST heading in the future. 
Also two big concerns is how do we get more boats out club raceing and also essescially up here in the midlands the servere lack of crews is a major problem.
The RYA dosent help with progtam to produce helms and not crews, you look at club results up here and there are a handful of crewed boats the rest at least 2/3 to 3/4 are single handers.
Off my soapbox now,
 
Paul
 

Welcome to the soapbox Paul.
You raise the related issue of club racing. I expect this varies from club to club, depending mainly on how strong the Merlin fleet is at an individual club and whether they have class racing.
I fear that quite a number of sailors in our fleet use the down time when theyre not sailing Merlin Open Meetings sailing other classes, maybe in club handicap racing where they get a better rating or in the other classes series.

This is my opinion, not necesserily that of any committee and Im on a different soapbox - but if we all agreed on everything how boring would life be? :)
When the quest to reduce the calender size began the objective was to reduce the dilution in the fleet sailing and get more people in the same place at the same time. What I dont think anyone expected was for the gaps we created to suddenly be filled by two extra championship events (Womens and Youths) and also the formation of two more regional circuits, one of which is proving to be extrememly popular.
Ironicly we now have more events that we have had for a long, long time!
This comes back to time and there are 33 weekends between the beginning of march and the end of october.
Salcombe, The champs and bourne end week account for 5 of them.
Inlands, womens and youth champs a further three.
The current ST format uses 12 more.
Thats just over half of the calender effectively ringfenced for national level competition and leaves the regional circuits with 13 weekends.
Even if they all clash and only use 8 weekends thats 5 free weekends left over.
Does this matter? Obviously its neither anticipated nor expected that people will do all of the events. But what we are seeing is that people arent bothered about an open meetings status and are going to the events that they like - this makes what Pat says make good sense. But it doesnt solve the problem of fleet dilution, or solve the problem of club level sailing which ill come onto later.
One event that stands out to me over the last few years is the one day event at QMSC. Whenever queen mary is mentioned in my experience its invariably followed by a wave of negativity. "Its bleak, its hard to launch, theres nothing there, im not travelling for a day, its to professional, theres too much racing etc etc etc". So the one day ST, with four races at QMSC last year had the largest turnout of any inland ST event with some notable absentees. Why was this?
That leads me to think that we simply arent quite delivering what a significant and otherwise silent section of the fleet want (They vote with their feet). At the risk of being heretical I would like to see 9 ST events at high quality sailing venues some of which - if theyll have us (This shouldnt be taken for granted) - we would not necesserily go to. I dont think we have gone far enough with reducing the ST size or tried it for long enough to see a significant effect, and certainly coming of the back of covid has not helped this. When it comes to numbers travelling while without doubt its a shadow of our heyday we are actually doing OK within our demographic.
Just because a club doesnt have ST status it doesnt mean that they cant have an open meeting or that they would be discouraged from doing so. To my knowledge we have never done this, but several clubs seem of the belief that no ST means no open. I think we need to realise that regional racing is likely to be where things go over the next few years and the sooner we are prepped for this the better we will cope with that transition as the world continues to change. In the immediate term people will continue to support their favourite clubs regardless of whether or not its an ST event and there is nothing wrong with that.
The trouble with trying to make any decision like this is that when - as Pat and I do - you have constructive disagreement as to what you should do you tend to end up in the middle ground. The middle ground is no good, we need to go one way or the other - we were in Pats camp not all that long ago, weve never tried the other end of the scale and I think we should be brave enough to do so.
When it comes to club racing in modern boats I think on a national level the class is heading into deep, deep trouble and I dont know what the answer is. We have gone from a position of strength from the midlands southwards to find ourselves with a handful of clubs with more than a couple of modern merlins racing on or around the south coast. Getting people to sail their boats at their club is easier said than done it would seem as the majority of modern boats are no longer boats you can really sail with someone who has turned up looking for a ride on a saturday afternoon. Its simply easier to sail your singlehander that you can rig in 5 minuites.
Would less big events help?
In my case it might actually, because there would be incentive to leave the boat at the club, rigged and i would rather sail a two man boat than a singlehander.
To grow the class at club level it needs something to grow from and with the loss of so many boats from club racing over the last 5-10 years its going to be reliant on us travellers to help revitalise - and that means we need space in the calender to do it.
 

Very interesting Pat, and other contributors.
I rather enjoyed the old umpteen event format partly because we could go to all sorts of strange (to me) venues but mainly because (correct me if Im wrong) the ST was more likely to go to the wire, because there were so many more event winners.  The final event (for many of my campaigning years that was Draycote) would nearly always be the deciding "shoot out".
Dan Alsop

Chris, I think you sum up the dilema very well. I know its not easy and I think we all have the same goals.
But, my beef is watering down the Silver Tiller, and now the Silver Pole which I think is a great step forwards.
Maybe should agree to differ on this?

Hi there, 
this is our first season out on the circuit in our merlin and love the silver tiller events more than the opens and have found this years options.... Limiting... reason i say that is because we also compete in other classes, greedy i know:) and they often clash. We find the social in the evening is what makes it for us and makes us feel better about our performance on the water. 
My main criticisim of the closest silver tiller was the Burton/Bartley weekend, i didnt go to burton because i sail at bartley and didnt want to take the boat for only one day and i cant see any benefit to doing it that way in future. Id like one silver tiller a month particually in summer so we can camp on site to save costs. 
Were finding ourselves mostly competeing with a diffrent league of sailor so attending salcombe week and Nationals is a couple of years down the road which is why we would like to see more Mid level competion. Our big event will be youths but i remain scepetical of the effectiveness of having a womens and youth champs... from the type and age of the boats at an expensive location it came accross as an eliteist thing and i think its the wrong end of the stick to attract long term prospective sailors instead it may be focusing all attention on one small event rather than trying to build momentum and long term intrest. A youth prize at regional level that assists an under 25 maintain their boat, dependant on their specific circumstances, that makes it more accessible at a grassroots club. 
I do mostle agree with Chris about the Merlin at club level... Im one of three that consistantley sail but we never see the others at all even when theyre not at events. Which is a shame as we could really learn a lot and develop ourselves as well as encouraging others at our club to join the fleet. 
D lucas 
3581

Of course we can agree to disagree (Even though im right ;) ), the other aspect of this discussion is what do we call success? Lots of qualifiers for the series or (Hopefully) more boats in the same place at the same time? I know there are two passionate camps on this and the second onbe hasnt really been acheived though in fairness i think the world and sailing in particular have changed more than we anticipated since the original discussion!
Really good to hear the thoughts of a boat owning "youth" member! 

Before pitching into this debate I have tried to look at the overall results for this years ST up to now. I cant find any. Please advise me where to look.
Peter Male

Chris raises an important point thats worth considering: what do we think success looks like?
The answer is of corse well attended events that people enjoy going to. But what other aims will the class set for itself? More host club participation from club-level sailors? more students goining the class and dragging older boats out of retirement? Or the amount of engagement from out of fleet sailors willing to have a go. Perhaps the attendance at this years events should decide what to do.... but theres some more questions that could be asked.
This makes me wonder if you could combine more events? Do we need as many one day opens? DO things like the youth and Womens championchip need their own weekend or be combined with a silver tiller or Inlands? 
Food for thought.....
 

Although the title of this thread is about the Silver Tiller, the discussion has touched on a wider set of issues.  
I am going to pick up on this wider discussion.  
There are several groups of sailors in this (and any other) class.  

The Front End of the Racing fleet (for whom the Silver Tiller and National Championships are the focus) 
The Back end of the Racing Fleet (for whom regional circuits are a good aim) 
The Non-Travelling Club Racers (who would like to be racing other Merlins at their own club) 
The Non-Racing Merlin Sailors (who are still learning, or looking for crews, or training their crews, or fixing their boats, or otherwise not quite ready to race their Merlins ...) 

I think the class association is probably the only place that can organise the events at the front end of the fleet and is also the best place to cater for the second section.  Once we get to the third and fourth sections we are down to the clubs, though an informal local or regional network of Merlin sailors could be quite helpful. 
It would be good if we knew (for each region):

How many clubs there were where Merlins were sailed ? 
How many clubs had MROA members ? 
How many Merlins were at any particular club ? 
Whether there was fleet racing for Merlins at a particular club ? 

This kind of information could help to create a local network that could promote the class.  
There may well be two sailors with Merlins at adjacent clubs who are both looking for a race ready crew ? 
(Merlins are not the simplest boats to sail and the option of "grabbing the nearest teenager" on the weekly "junior night" will take time to produce race-ready crews.) 
There you are; the view from a "Non-Travelling" Merlin Sailor.  
 
 
 

Organising the Sliver Tiller, regional, classic & vintage etc circuit, will be quite a task. I therefore wish to record my thanks to all involved.
I also need to add that I no longer sail at my local club and get my ‘sailing fix’ with Tim by ‘doing the circuit’. We both get far more satisfaction from this rather than sailing in the menagerie fleet (or should that be imaginary fleet?) locally.
Many aspects have evolved in this thread but I want to return to the opening paragraphs in Pat’s original post.
Climate change was one of the drivers for the change but did MROA go in the correct direction?
Climate change and our need to recognise the changes to our weather should be addressed by providing more opportunities to sail locally rather than having to travel greater which is the potential result of limited opportunities. If there are two ST events on the same weekend but are in different parts of the country, does it matter? Two firsts, seconds, etc on the score sheet for the same weekend could create greater interest as the season develops.
Another aspect of climate change is the likelihood of the proposed calendar not being completed. Looking back over the last couple of years, my experience is that the weather is no longer being ‘co-operative’.
In no particular order :-
2023 Inlands   -   1st date – postponed - too much water. 2nd date - postponed - no wind.  3rd date - competed but a 1 day event.
2024 Burghfield  postponed / abandoned -  too much wind
2024 Ranelagh abandoned -   too much water resulting in too much ‘floating debris’
2024 Banbury      Forecast for high winds which I am convinced meant that a significant number decided not to travel (2 races out of 3 were sailed followed by an excellent lunch and a pleasant afternoon)
My experiences with the sea meetings we have attended                  .
2022  -  Brightlingsea  -  sailed 1 day of 2  -  no wind
2023  -   Mumbles  -  sailed 1 day of 2   -   too much wind
2024  -   Pwllheli  -   sailed 2 days of 3  -  no wind
Therefore, my message to the committee - you need to change course please  -  more opportunities not less.

Just to prove that you cant please all of the people all of the time, even in the same boat.
Zero complaints with the silver tiller format, my message to the committee - thanks for all of the time that must go in behind the scenes to set the calendar, liase at the events and publish the results :)
Id say that are many factors that affect turn out, and only a few of those are within the control of the MROA.