I'm not the Chair and haven't been in some time, but I can lend some perspective. When I got the job from Jamie Diamond years ago, it had been a bad year for US SAILING investment funds. We were told our fund (the Hoyt-Jolley Fund, primarily established with a large donation from Bill Jolley) had lost money - we still elected to conduct a championship and we used principle from the fund to do so. We tried that year to remove the fund from US SAILING control - we felt the money should be put into some sort of fund that we had direct control of so we could move to more conservative preservation investments when the committee felt it was prudent. We sat down with the US SAILING folks and they explained that sometimes investments lost money, and if we pulled out we were only locking in the loss rather than maintaining a longer term outlook. We reluctantly accepted the fact that many different restricted funds were lumped together and invested by the national organization, and we dropped our effort. We then saw several years of growth - we earned more in interest than we spent and the principle grew. Last year, however, the market saw a sharp downturn and we lost some money. The committee again decided that it was important to conduct a championship, voted to proceed, and requested the Board approve the expenditure even though principle would be spent. The Board unanimously agreed.

In the mean time, the relationship between the volunteers that run (and the clubs that host) the event and the staff at US SAILING deteriorated somewhat. For context, it is important to understand that there are competing philosophies in US SAILING - one is the volunteer-guided vision of a service organization where hired staff serve the membership, and the other is a staff-guided vision of an organization that uses volunteers to accomplish some tasks. These visions, IMO, are mutually exclusive.

The report Mark is quoting was written by two people at US SAILING that have never been to, seen, or participated in our championship. They believe there is a communication problem primarily because, during my tenure as chair, I sometimes found the direction or restrictions I was given to be detrimental to the event, unfair to the host, or not applicable to a given situation. So I quietly insulated the volunteers from that which I felt could be disregarded. With the help of some great people, we enjoyed several very good events that made money and brought recognition to the hosts and suppliers of the boats, while at the same time the restricted fund grew.

Since that time, there have been two other chairs and committees that have struggled to maintain the event under growing financial and administrative demands from US SAILING. I do not speak for those two men, though I did and do still volunteer on the committee. If there is a perceived slant to this post, it is my own for which I am fully responsible.

There are still people volunteering within US SAILING that are defending the multihull championships, both for youth and adults. For me, they are worth defending because they are unique - they bring together diverse people from many different classes to compete together on provided boats. Nothing else in the US does that. Guaranteed, if you make Alter Cup or the Youth Championship for the Stevens Trophy, you are going to be racing someone you have never met before because they're from far away or they're from a class in which you don't compete. I feel the events are important to our discipline and should be preserved in some form. As Mark implies above, that starts with interest at the local level. That interest has flagged in recent years and it is now showing at the national level. This is what has made the events vulnerable. We're currently, right now today, on the brink of losing them both. Neither event has a plan for 2010 in place. The authors of the report have suggested that the events "take a year off" to get organized.