Dinghy Dash
This is a very casual race for boats of all types.
Everyone starts out on their own, sails a J shaped course, and meets up at the end at a beach or campground, and spends the night.
The next day everyone can sail a short distance back to the starting place.
Typically there are no prizes, only a trip of personal accomplishment, and your stats published on the web of how far you got in what kind of boat.
J Shaped Course
The importance of the J shaped course is so that people can sail part way out, and at any time they can elect to turn back and head for the destination beach.
The weather might get bad, something might break on their boat or they might just be tired.
Also it is adventageous for the course to be going upwind first, that way all the tough sailing is done first.
The next day when sailing back, it will be only a short distance back to where everyone came from.
Some won't be interested in the race portion at all, and will just sail from the starting point to the beach, and possibly sail around the area, or play on the beach.
Any Boat Type
PDRacers really are sheltered water boats because of the square bow.
Most people who are interested in pdracers own or have built more than one boat, and have a big water capable boat they can take on this type of course.
That said, I am sure there are plenty of routes that can be found sailing a good distance thru protected waters.
Also for spending the night, a number of people might like to join the group sail, but have a bigger boat to sleep on, so they will take a pocket cruiser or larger boat.
Origin of this race
I have always wanted to run in the Watertribe Everglades Challenge, but haven't so far because of the time required to get there, the distance to sail, and how long it takes to get back to your car.
It is a one way race of 360 or so miles down the gulf coast of Florida.
Talking with other friends in the same situation as me, we talked about a number of other ideas locally for a similar race.
Sailing around Galveston Island was one idea, but most were not interested being out in the open gulf.
Then a run down the inside of Galveston Bays was takled about, but being a one way trip, the coordination to get people back to their cars, and then back to their boats was frustrating.
Then this idea came up and it has so many nice features, that it now has a name: "Dinghy Dash"
Dinghy Dash
Any Boat Type