But thank you anyway Matt. Now I can google "my friend" and do some reading up on him. Only cowards use fake names.

Wouter

Read all you like. I have nothing to hide. I just prefer that people I haven't met IRL not use my real name.

I haven't made any kind of effort to conceal my real identity. I simply asked someone that I *don't know* to stop using my real name.



Don't we all?

Hi, My name is Chris Wessels (I don't get the secret name thing yet, is there some reason we're not supposed to know who is who?) Pretty funny thread. My kids all race, 2 youth H16 and an Opti guy. They just like to get out there and bump heads and beat up on the weak. They sail the Hobie, because thats what we have, but they'd sail whatever to get out and go. Funny thing is, they rarely hear about anything else besides the Hobie events. They are good too, my 16 year old son and 15 year old daughter can be good competetion for most A fleeters out there, but yet they almost never hear or get invited to ANY thing other that Hobie stuff. My kids can sail an F-18, Sl-16, Hobie 20, whatever.....but never get asked. SO, my question is: What the hell is this youth multihull association doing to market? When we here, who live somewhere other than Florida or LA, have TONS of great sailors who just sit and wonder why they don't feel the love? Explain that.

Why not?

Well, I should say NAYMA should support youth EVENTS, not classes per se.

Is he being stalked by that Gyro truck again? Man, you need to move to FL.

And I'm sorry I don't have a goat. Oh, wait... That's the OTHER thread...

Hey guys send or dont send your money but be fair some lucky clubs are going to have brand new cats turn up for their youth to use for FREEEEEEE. The kids can then decide what they want to sail. If some company gave me 5 boats to use I would promote them vigorously as well, what a strange idea that you have to promote the other brands that exclude you from competition to call your organisation any name <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />. Well done to all involved in organising this youth initiative and keep me posted. Those that dont like the idea know which thread to ignore.
regards

What I'm saying is that the organization, under whoever's leadership, should be free to persue a course of action that it believes would lead to greater numbers of young sailors on multihulls. If that means choosing a single class and attempting to reign in all the participants under a standardized umbrella, then it should be able to do so without being harangued for having some perceived alternative, nefarious agenda.

I'm pretty sure Im going to win the lottery this week, after that Im going to pay off the house and cars, and quit my job.

Now that Im bored, Im going to volunteer my time and try to promote youth sailing in the US.

First Ill start a group with a cool name, maybe the "North American Youth Multihull Association". It will problably just be US sailors, but North American sounds cooler.

Now, I need to save some of my lottery money to live off of, so in order to get boats Ill go ask around and see if anyone will donate any to my cause. I very much doubt anyone will as catamaran sailing is such a small market, manufacturers arn't exactly getting rich, but Ill ask anyway.

If someone does give me boats for free, Ill be really excited, and will do my best to promote them as much as I can.

Now, I may not be politically correct in how I promote my group, and I may not ever accomplish or represent everything I say I will, but Im volunteering my time and making an effort in an area where so little exists.

Art, cheers to you for all your current and past efforts! You stand apart as one of those individual few that not only talks about doing something, you actually do it. And what, you didn't win the lottery?

**Mary - I took out that last part for you <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

And some "Spicy Sentence Enhancers" as well.

Good work. The goat herder will be piping up shortly.

North American does NOT sound cooler to me. If I am sending money to this organization, I want to know whether it is going to go to support youth sailing just in the U.S. or also in Canada, Mexico, and who knows what other countries are included in "North America."

NAYRU went out of existence a long time ago and became USYRU, which is now USSA. Organizations that are trying to help people in sailing in the United States should say "United States" in their name, to parallel and comply with US Sailing. This applies to NAMSA and now to NAYMA.

When this thread started, I actually wondered how long it would take to degenerate into a fight. Seems like that happens so often with these kinds of threads. Too much tribalism to consider the bigger picture...

Here's my take: More power to Art for doing SOMETHING. More power to anyone else who puts together something with any other cat platform as well. And more power to anyone who invites a neighborhood kid along, etc., to spread cat sailing in a less organizationed way. In the meantime, why throw mud on someone else who is choosing to do it a different way? As long as more kids are exposed to cat sailing, what's the difference?

So are you saying you will donate to US only organizations and will not donate organizations that include other North American countries? I can understand shutting out the Candians, but our friends to the south, that's just mean.

You're on a roll today, Ding. You been drinkin' that goat milk?

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. Why should we be giving money that could be supporting youth sailors in other countries who would be competing against the youth sailors from our country on the world level? Doesn't make any sense to me.

Guess it just depends on which border you live near. If we were to cut out the Canadians from our HCA Div 4, we would loose one third of our regattas and sailors. Not good Eh?















Guess it depends which border you live near. If we cut out the Canadians from HCA Div. 4 we would loose a third of our Fleet, sailing regattas, and sailing friends. No good Eh?

No opinion, I was just looking for a way to take a shot at the Canadians.

Besides isn't this all moot, aren't we all dead in a decade because of global warming?

Mary, in our case, the strong youth programs in Canada do help grow our programs in the US. They come here and we go there for Regattas. This is true not only in the Hobie Cat Association events, but all monohull programs as well. Plus they are fun people, and have great parties.

Many of our North American Events are held in Canada, and we are looking forward to many more in the future.

Caleb

yes, competition..bad.. I thought that the goal was just to get KIDS sailing not just black kids or white kids or US kids.

ya you guys in florida will be crying to get into canada in 50 years...ha.

Wait...Art won the lottery?