I have to say at the outset that I am an advocate of multihulls governing themselves totally. That said I would like to give my reasons for this opinion.
For over 20 years I worked “WITHIN” the YA system for multihulls. I have been on many committees of yacht clubs, and state yachting bodies, as well as being vice commodore and commodore of more than one yacht club, so I have had “a little” first hand experience” of the workings of “the system” all the way from the bottom right up to the top. In all that time, no matter how hard and how diligently I, and many other “multihull” people worked from within the system, any and all proposals that we put forward, no matter how minor (or major), when it came to the crunch, were always voted down. We were continuously offered “carrots” to placate us if/when we showed signs of dissatisfaction with the treatment of multihulls (as well as being told repeated “don’t rock the boat, it will only work against you – sound familiar?), all of which, when it came time for action on those carrots, “things” had moved on and all promises vanished into obscurity. I fully understand people saying that “we have to work WITHIN the system”, and for many years I was a great advocate of that opinion, but after more than 20 years of “batting my head against a brick wall” with NOTHING actually changing (except the promises), I finally realised that, no matter who or what was “in there” working for multihull benefit, NOTHING would ever really change unless the system as a whole changed. Committees, councils, association, all have the same bad points when it comes to the final decisions made and that is that, it doesn’t matter who or what or how they are made up, there will always be “political” agendas, whereby the most powerful (by their numbers) and most influential, will always carry the day. The one thing that all the yachting authorities have in common is that non-multihull interests dominate them, and no matter how active multihull sailors are in placing THEIR members onto those bodies, they will NEVER gain the majority voting position. How can anyone with half an ounce of intelligence think for one minute that so many “pro mono hulled” thinking people are ever going to “look kindly” on the poor multihull sailor and vote them (the multihulls) any benefits at the reduction of their own personal interest area (mono)? Apart from all else human nature is against it as well as history, so what makes anyone think that ANYTHING will change?
All the time that I was actively involved with YA’s, one of the most fundamental areas that hurt so much was the allocation of funding for “junior” sailing. Every year funding became available from the national body for juniors, and in spite of several different multihull association having active junior training programs, and purchasing several junior catamarans (11’ Arrafura cadets”) for that purpose, ALL funding was allocated to monohull sailing, even to the extent of funding going in preference to an active multihull program, to a class of dingy where only three were available in the whole of the state, without any active class and with no junior training in that class, or any intention of starting any training.
Similar instances, (to many to detail), of funding going to low membership numbered mono hull classes to assist with the running of their national titles, while application from multihull classes with membership numbers in their hundreds for similar funding would go completely ignored and unanswered.
There are many similar examples of the same sort of treatment of multihulls that I have witnessed and I won’t bore you with a chronology, but I would make the point that in all this time, and with all the work that good, competent, active, people have attempted for the benefit of the multihull community NOTHING HAS CHANGED!!! It is still ALL going on as it always has and I for one can see no way for that to change while the mono hull interest parties dominate the administration of this sport (and US).