Jamie,
With that philosophy, all the existing sailing classes and associations (like the Hobie Class Assn., for instance) should disband and all their members should just throw their efforts into US Sailing as individuals?

As a multihull sailing association, NAMSA is a voting member of US Sailing and is able to cast a vote on things that require a vote, just as the Multihull Council gets to have at least one or two votes. As a separate association, therefore, NAMSA can help the Multihull Council to get things passed that are beneficial to multihulls. The same thing with HCA and any other multihull associations or multihull one-design classes that belong to US Sailing – associations get a vote, whereas individual sailors do not.

So the best way to “shape the direction of US Sailing” is to be an association with voting rights and also to have a delegate at the Multihull Council meetings to give input about the needs and interests of the particular association.

The Multihull Council should actually be encouraging more multihull associations to form and to join US Sailing. When you look at all the multihull classes there are, if all of them would form class associations and all of those class associations would join US Sailing, we would have a large number of multihull-friendly votes! Maybe we could even convince US Sailing to include a multihull in the Junior Olympic Festivals or elect a multihull sailor as president of US Sailing.