At this point, I am truly uncertain what to do. I am as discouraged as I have ever been in my adult life. If there is interest, I'll put together an agenda to host a conference call and we can hash out a plan. So far, nothing we've tried has yeilded much in the way of tangible results, even though there has been progress and I think there are some good signs both here in the US and internationally for multihull sailing in the future. Little of that has to do with US SAILING however. As it stands, the best we can hope for is a status-quo of our adult ladder and our two championships, which are both pretty healthy. It is possible that the US will no longer support a youth multihull team for the ISAF Worlds since it is not an Olympic path... not really sure, yet.

There was a time that the Hobie Class maintained a seperate set of rules. Going back to that sort of arrangement is possible, but will not work in all areas of the US. Some folks rely on YCs to run events, some on dealers, some on the Hobie Class, and some on their paper fleet. Any sort of proposed break-away plan would need to be a workable solution for everyone or we risk seeing inconsistent regional solutions developed by the movers and shakers at the local level. The biggest detractor would be that our larger events might be run under a different set of rules than your home fleet uses.

The other elephant in the room is that a break-away would require some people. The MHC has been limping along for a while, but the core group is getting thin. One of our foundational presences has been Darline Hobock - if you have not heard, she has experienced a setback in her health this weekend. We should expect that a day will come when people like Darline, Gordon Isco, Dave Shaffer and Deb Schaefer all find other things to occupy their time or that require their attention. Individual classes also appear to me to be struggling a little to fill volunteer positions. NAMSA has been in place for years and has been pulling off a great annual event in Tradewinds, but not much has happened since Rick's call to arms some four years ago. My point is that there does not seem to be the critical mass needed to bring a replacement organization into being or revamp an existing organization.

I've shown poor leadership of the MHC over the last two weeks because I've had a very hard time getting motivated in the face of what seems to be an epic level of disatisfaction with an organization to which I have devoted an absurd amout of time and money. I'm questioning the need for continued involvement when everything we try seems to have no effect on decisions made at the Board level which engender deeper and deeper resentment.