Asking financial membership fees or not

The choice for not having the normal (or conventional) membership fee setup is that that is often more trouble than it is worth. Especially in the beginning of a class.

Example : I order to be allowed to receive money from members and use it several nations in the world demand that you are officially registered at some government agency, that you pay renewal fees, maintain a board of officials and that you do a book keeping that is suitable to inspection.

I've done this before in two instances and I really don NOT want to do this when I can help it. Right now in the F16 we have no need for big financial support. We'll probably ask for some donations to maintain and spice up the website and such but that is less than just maintaining registration in for example The Netherlands. I seriously do not have anytime running a fully verifiable membership fee system nor do I enjoy such work at all. It always leads to lots of compliants and most notibly it leads to grandstanding members who think they have a right to demand everything they desire because they parted by some 30 bucks or something. I refer to Steve's comments. I've seen this happen often enough and I really have no taste to waste my spare time like that. I'm much better off spending that time in activities that actually grow the class.

So I won't do that on a international level. This doesn't mean however that local class organisations aren't allowed to register themselfs, pay all the duties, work-out all the requirements, satisfy them and handle the paying members. You guys are free to do that. However, this set up is fully contained within the local classes and the international voting membership is complete independent from that.

Yes we do things differently than other classes and we have good reasons for that. Our track record speaks for itself. 3 independent builders with 3 independent F16 models a 4th is on the way, world penetration. We must take care to realize that this unconventional setup did allow us to achieve that. I for one am more than happy to continue with it and milk it some further. I don't see any merit in ANY conventional class setup. Besides it wouldn't fit the F16 class well, our designs are different and so are we. Who else can offer a full carbon mast for 700 pounds (1000 Euro's/1300 US$) ? Who else offers the same performance per buck as we do and all over the world as well ? I really haven't seen any reason why we should abandon our succes setup now in favour for a more conventional setup that so much did NOT work for other classes.

But to both Darryll and others I say, setup up your local class structure along the lines you favour and proof us wrong. You are welcome to do that. But I'm NOT going to do it. I don't have the time for it, I don't see the need for it and my activities do not require such a setup. So I'm the wrong person to talk to here. Get into contact directly with your local F16 sailors and convince them to pay membership fees to you in return for which you will build the local class for them.




For centuries trains have used wheels to move along, since a decade engineers are working on magnetic levitation so that trains of the future are more efficient energy wise, less noisy, faster, smoother in the ride and can carry more weight. Are we to tell these guys that they have it all wrong because wheels have worked forever ? What would such an attitude have done to catamaran design over the last 20 years ? Would F16 ever have formed in such a enviroment ? Sorry Darryl, nice punch line but short on workable content.





You have misunderstood the situation. I DON'T want to change the format of the association, just make it more formal. I REALLY DON'T want to bring it more in line with other organisations; I don't think they work well. Example the F20 class was without a class board for some 10 months, and nearly died, because they couldn't find volunteers to replace the outgoing ones. Problems like that, the F16 structure was designed to handle such "signs of our times" and grow nevertheless. We seem to have done just that since our inception. It served us very well so why should we consider downgrading to an setup that is of the past ?





Thank you Darryl, I have a completely different opinion and I'm willing to take the risk and so to are the other founders. As we created this class and builded it up from scratch I think we have some background on which to base such a different opinion.

I really don't see any future problems of this kind. All I see is a class that does what needs to be done an d nothing more. This is most cost effective to members and already they get one of the best designed catamarans in the world with events like Gulfport 1-up championship and the DCC or Australian/Asia F16 challenges.

So I repeat. You are all free to set up local organisations along the lines you think best, I'm anxious to be proven wrong but the international organisation will not go to a more conventional setup for the foreseeable future because I don't have the time for that nor a sufficient number of members to pay for it and I'm not going to pay for it out of my own pocket .

Wouter