Sent to Amy Larkin at US SAILING (amylarkin@ussailing.org)



Dear Amy,



As president of the United States A-Class Catamaran Association (USACA), I am writing to let you know that I am making a choice this year to not support US Sailing by non-payment of my membership dues. I have been active in sailboat racing for over 30 years racing such one design classes as Finns, Lasers, Snipes, Thistles, Lightnings, various sailboards, and for the last 16 years multihulls that have included the Prindle 19, Tornado, A-Class catamaran, and a Corsair Sprint 750 trimaran. Since the early-1980’s, I have been fairly consistent paying my annual US Sailing membership dues. There are two specific reasons why I choose for now to not support US Sailing:



The unanimous vote of US sailing delegates at the November ISAF meeting to eliminate the multihull event from the 2012 Olympic Games despite a position previously stated by the organization to support such an event and contrary to the specific recommendations of the ISAF events committee that included a multihull event(s).
The total lack of response from Mr. Jim Capron and the entire US Sailing board of directors to a letter written on April 21, 2008 by me on behalf of the USACA (see www.usaca.info) to ask the organization to reconsider its position on this issue going into the ISAF mid-year meeting in Qingdao. To our knowledge, US Sailing was not among the ISAF member national authorities that requested re-affirmation of the November selection of events and at this time we believe that US Sailing delegates did not support any consideration of a change in events.


US Sailing (by its actions) continues to send a message that it does not consider the multihull community in this country or the world to be a legitimate branch of the sport. Until I see change in the organization that leads me to believe otherwise, I will continue to boycott the organization with non-payment of membership dues. Further action I will take will be to send this letter to the membership of the USACA and other multihull organizations.



Sincerely Yours,



Bob Hodges