That has been my experience, too.My experience of younger people and students is that they have far too many other things to do. Most reliable crew are 50 up.
+1. So many racing skippers seem to expect that new crew will walk aboard with bags of experience and skill. While that can happen, insisting upon it certainly restricts the pool of potential candidates, and I'm not surprised that Savage is struggling.Grab those 'Comp Crews'. Expect nothing of them except a bit of enthusiasm, but you can train them up. Some of them might be very competitive, they just don't have the skills yet.
Such generalizations are meaningless and inaccurate.Invite dinghy sailors and buy them beer, if they have raced dinghies they will be good race crew on a yacht. Yacht crew on dinghies doesn't work quite as well.
Excellent advice.The other thing is, it's easier to get people to come if you are offering them a series, not just filling in at your convenience. That might mean taking an extra body now and then.