To weigh in on the separation issue here. It is a very simple issue to debate; Are there enough multihull sailors around the world that are willing to get involved, stay involved and make this truly happen? If there are, then a separate organization is possible and the multihull world could benefit from it's existence. The question to date has been volunteers and support, without both there can be no International Multihull Council/Federation. I believe that that meeting in Australia last evening was to form a Multihull Council within YA, but I am waiting to hear from Phil Jones on the meeting.

This is very true. There is good precedent for this with other sports. It will always be an uphill battle if we stay with US Sailing and ISAF. US Sailing is a good example of an MNA run by people with little or no interest in our class. As long as people like Bowdie remain in power there we are directing our efforts (and funds) to support monohull sailing instead of our sport.

Well, since the IOC has engrained ISAF to deal with classes and equipment for the sport of sailing for the Olympics, it seems pretty obvious that completely divorcing from USSA and ISAF will lead to never, ever having a multihull in the Olympics again.

Personally, I think X-Games is the way to go anyway (rather than Olympics), it would be a better showcase to a target audience that we are really looking for (young, potentially active people).

This brings up other questions, like what would we call the sport if we separate from ISAF? Can we call it sailing, and hold Worlds, without being sued?

Mike

Oli

The MHC meeting was notable in that nobody stepped up and argued for separating from US Sailing. So the rank and file who do the organizational work to maintain the current catamaran program in the USA are not up for generating a new organization.

(It is also not true that we are PAYING with dues to just get screwed over here by Brenner, Bodie and US Sailing.)

My personal conclusion was... IF a new international organization for catamarans were to be created... It would be a top down kind of thing.... The elite international sailors will have to be the ones to get it organized, financed and going. If these sailors are able to persuade the sailors of the major classes to organize their international events independently, redirect the current financial sponsors from ISAF and support of the New Multi organization at the international level... Then you have something.

Operationally a new organization would essentially replace ISAF at the international level... At this point, the US sailors will have an option. The US sailors, clubs and volunteers of the MHC would then have to decide to follow the new lead of the International Multi organization or stay in the US Sailing system or find some intermediate.
So, Until this happens, the sense of the meeting was to work within the existing system and work to taking leadership positions within US Sailing and ISAF so that key future decisions are not influenced by Brenner and Bodie.

ISAF does not own the rights to the word "worlds". The leverage that they do use is that any sailor competing in a "worlds" that is not sanctioned by the ISAF will be banned from the ISAF. They can't sue you because you used the word "worlds" but they can kick you out of the organization.

I may be wrong but one example of separation of codes that has proven to be in the “best interests of all” as well as successful (particularly at Olympic level) that spring to mind is rowing and kayaking/canoeing?
Very similar to mono hull sailing and catamaran sailing? Both are obviously “sailing” But both are uniquely different from each other.

I am not convinced that the IOC would be exactly pleased with a split.

If the IOC accepted it, they would also be accepting an increase in cost, effort, infrastructure and number of venues associated to the original sport. How could that be possible when they already stated that their goal is the opposite with regards to sailing (and its branches)?

I don't think the IOC is eager to include new sport branches in the games. Almost any sport can split its branches, but they will be included in the games only if the IOC is convinced that it will yield profits. If this is not our case, we'd better stay with ISAF than alone.

Lastly, I noticed the mention to "monohull sailing" and "catamaran sailing". When you use "catamaran" instead of "multihull" you exclude trimarans, proas, etc., so you repeat the same conduct problem (biased focus) that we are fighting against. We have to be consistent with our reasoning.

Take care,
Luiz

How do we make Catamaran Sailing a legitimate sport, suitable for Olympic competition?
Bottom line; we need funding. Lots of funding and advertising revenue is undoubtedly the best way to obtain it.
Sailing is exciting, interesting, spectacular and healthy.
Sailing is good to watch if presented well.
Catamaran racing is very exciting, very interesting, very spectacular, very healthy, and very good to watch if presented well.
Sailing venues are very pleasant places to be. Sailing clubs occupy some of the best real-estate in the world.
What we have here is a very unique sport with enormous potential for development into a very marketable, and profitable enterprise.
Of all the sporting equipment, a sailboat probably has the largest and most suitable area for carrying advertising and a cat carries the biggest sail for it's length of all sailing boats.
To attract advertising revenue we need to;
get more people involved in sailing catamarans including sailors, spectators, and in particular, good sponsors. The more people we attract, and the more popular sailing becomes, the more marketable it will be.
develop sailing into a product which can be offered to the general public as a legitimate form of entertainment.
develop sailing into a suitable Telesport [television] Television is the single most important vehicle we have to promote sailing and raise revenues. Presently there are some initiatives being investigated and developed to make Catamaran racing, television friendly. These initiatives include developing sailing specific filming strategies and training sailing savvy directors, producers and commentators. Imagine presenting an NRL game on television but using directors, producers and commentators who know very little about Rugby League! This is happening with sailing. Even at Olympic level our best directors and commentators are seriously incompetent. It's no wonder the general public have no idea what's going on when they watch a sailboat race. We need to find the Ray Warrens, Frank Hydes and Phil Liggetts of sailing. These people are probably responsible, more than any for giving their prospective sports legendery status in the homes of the general public.
We need to attract/find good managers to make this happen. Sailors generally, and Catamaran sailors specifically, by their typical renegade nature don't often do well as managers, [turn up, race and go home] as is often evidenced by the lack of direction in many Cat clubs. It's possible that unpaid management of clubs has become a thing of the past. We need to be much more professional at club level and we should work toward employing managers IMO. The funding revenue is there if we could better organise ourselves and sell our product.
ATTRACTING GENERAL INTEREST
There are many initiatives which can be investigated and implemented to attract people to sailing. These include club training programs targeting the local area population with advertising. School sports activities can include a sailing option. We need to develop club training programs, specifically targeting youth. We need to work toward putting at least two training cats into every sailing club in Australia and encourage accredited coaches to help us. There are plenty of suitable, small, locally made catamarans available in Australia to support this endeavour. This will build the numbers of sailors and YA and YNSW should be vigorously active in fostering this activity particularly at club level
Further along the track we could organise and run an interclub round robin' style competition which might even develop into a league similar to football where sailing clubs enter teams which compete against each other on a regular basis at selected suitable venues, competitions like the NRL, NFL, Cricket Aust. etc. and Sydney Harbour and the Parramatta river are ideal locations for this as are the many lakes we have within close proximity to Sydney and it's environs.
ATTRACTING SPECTATORS.
Sailing clubs need to be aware that attracting spectators to their sport is critical to achieving their goals. Clubs can easily double or triple the involvement of people in sailing by providing facilities for spectators. Clubs should provide facilities such as decks, ferries, canteens, video coverage of racing etc. Sailboat racing needs to be held in areas which are spectator friendly where possible.
Where possible, video coverage should be provided for spectators in the clubs to give supporters an interest in events. Even better, a good, descriptive and sensible commentry could accompany the video coverage. [Is it any wonder spouses and other family members aren't interested when they aren't included, catered to or provided for].
ATTRACTING SPONSORS
Sponsors need exposure. To give sponsors exposure, sailing needs to be developed into a good spectator sport. The best exposure that can be offered to a sponsor is television coverage. Television coverage of sailing requires significant development in equipment, technology and production processes. This can be done but we need to get the interested parties involved. We desperately need some good promoters and managers.
With all the television channels now desperate for content, and considering the enormous value of our commodity, we should be a very wealthy enterprise.
In summary, there's plenty of potential to make sailing a very viable product similar to any other high profile spectator sport, we just need some direction and effort from as many good people as we can attract.
Now if we could pull this off, IOC would be kicking our door down to have us, and no more forlock tugging at ISAF.
Bern Leslie.

I think a split is a more radical and risky strategy than the circumstances require. However an international federation of national multihull organizations could easily exist in parallel with the rest of the sailing world.

Guys and Gals,

We can take action now, while the long term plans are developed. I'm now located in Perth, but still support my home cat sailors in Arizona, California and Nevada. Here are some items that worked for our fleets. These items were funded by sailors and crew.

* Advertise for crew in the local university classifieds (2 - 1 wk ads in AZ and CA yielded 6 new regular crew last year!)

* Create a season schedule and information for potential new crew and sailors. Distribute the brochure to local sailing retailers, sailing schools and at events

* Coordinate a shared campsite for crew (for travelling events). Make the site free to new crew. Help set up carpools and caravans

* Donate some time at a local sailing school with their open house or social sailing. Many of the crew that came from the schools would go back and promote our events.

Not only do we need to get people involved in cat sailing, but we need to get people that are potentially good future athletes. University age sailors like the weekend events and tend to be talented, easy-to-train athletes.

While I focussed on crew for Hobie 16s, I am now looking into getting skippers and the guys too big to be crew on a Hobie 16 more opportunities to start cat sailing.

BTW, I support the Western Aus Tornado Assoc and the local Nedlands YC Tornados. I've donated my time to organizing sponsors and photographers for their Nationals and States. Feel free to contact me if you have ideas or questions.

-Shauna McGee Kinney

Totally agree with you Mark.

Whilst I agree with the sentiments and have sympathy for the feelings...I too felt let down by ISAF...Now IS NOT the time the be shouting about rebellion.

We have the UKCRA affiliated to the RYA, and Aus has recently formed their own MHC recognised by their YA. So we need to work from within.

IMHO I can see no problem with forming an International Multihull Council, but in our haste lets not go independant.

Many in ISAF and MNAs are watching and reading these threads and will use these threads against us to try and show how rebellious and ungrateful we are.

Agree; we must work from within these organisations. Forming association(s) to promote and give Multi sailing a voice is an excellent idea, we already have (as Stu says) UKCRA, something forming in Aus, this should give us an informed / Balanced and carefully presented view. We need to preset ourselves as reasonable (but upset) people who want to work with the ISAF / IOC to correct the result of this (IMO) misguided vote to remove the Multi class from the Ollies.

Yes I agree, short term should try and work with the ISAF.

Long term, it would quite disappointing to spend all our capital to reestablish our relationship with the ISAF another four(4) years with the same result?
(then again, after the 2012 boring sailing Olympics may no longer exist?)

If this is really the case then why expect any worthwhile results from working within ?

Afterall then that is only their tool to preventing a succesful split off to happen that basically spells the end of ISAF.

Then they will mouth us with sweet promises till the window of opportunity for creating an alternative is over and then they can get back to giving us the boot !

And if anyone it thinking :"why would ISAF want to prevent a split off at all"

Once a viable alternative has been formed they will have lost their monopoly and with it the benefits that comes from forcing everybody and any financial revenue stream through their own organisation. They can also kiss their ownership of the "worlds" title good bye.

So I Rick wants to hold the Wave Worlds and ISAF gets down on it like a ton of breaks the rival organisation can ban any and all ISAF officials from ever racing any multihull or moth. In case you hadn't noticed, many big mono sailors also do stints on multis.

We do you think the EU community was formed ? Not because we agree with each one many points. It was because when the US placed import tarifs on EU steel, the EU could effectively ban US grain export to EU and force the US to reconsider its "interesting perception of free trade"

Without power you (we) are free to be ignored and hassled. With power they'll think twice.

I say, keep working from within but build up a far better powerstructure (negociation leverage) by having our own international organisation with the moths etc.

Currently we have a real shot at because guys like Bundock, Booth and Veal are all for it. With guys like that as ambassadors and promoters we have a REAL viable shot at it.

I for one will not trade that away for some local US sailing Multihull Council promise that things will be better next time.

Sorry Guys, US sailing screwed us over big time recently. Remember their support for no less then 2 multihulls ?

They can promise the world to us but I don't believe them.

The US-sailing multihulls council better bring back some real bacon, and soon, to proof their influence. I thinking about US sailing publically supporting the RYA public letter and proposal and ask for a re-vote.

If the MHC can not negociate this for us then they will have been played for fools by the mono and keel boat guys in US sailing, AGAIN. It will just be more useless promises like supporting 2 cats in the olympics that they are not willing to keep anyway.

We can excuse ourselves for falling for it the first time, but a second time ????

With respect to the Dutch representative voting against the multis, that story ain't over yet. Also we have a rival multihull organisation to the Dutch sailing federation and most cat sailor belong to that organisation. And I'm quite thankfull for that.

The way I see these rival organisations for multi like UKCRA and NBF are exactly the reason why some effective resistance could be organised on such short notice. Without UKCRA we won't even had a real shot at contesting the ISAF decision. Sure it was made in name of RYA but I'm sure that the polite but upset organising by UKCRA had a huge influence.

I only wish for this setup to be mirrored in other area's and linked up internationally.

Wouter

Wouter.

1. You've no idea what you're talking about - not about what is going on in the US, nor internationally.

2. You haven't a horse in this race. Stop saying "we" and "U.S." in the same sentence. You keep your house, we'll keep ours. Until there is some indication that you're on the volunteer list for your MNA, your insulting rhetoric = flatulence.

3. You continue to do disservice to those in the US that are doing real work on this issue by calling them fools. I've asked you already once politely to pipe down.

Why would a split spell the end for ISAF? If youd said if the IOC pulls sailing out of the Olympics then I might agree with you.

FYI UKCRA is not formed in the name of the RYA it is affiliated to the RYA which means the RYA recognises it as a proper INDEPENDANT body as it does class associations.

"I only wish for this setup to be mirrored in other area's and linked up internationally.".... about the only sentence worth reading in this ill informed posting of yours and echoes what I said..... BUT it is only from working from within the system and coming up with logical arguments that UKCRA have been able to work WITH the RYA to try and overturn the vote. TRUST me if we had gone in banging independance and shouting do you think that the RYA would have been so receptive? I'll answer that for you ......NO.

Im NOT saying we shouldn't set up an International Multihull council with each MNA having its own ...quite the opposite I think we should, it would give us a bigger voice, BUT independance at this stage would be a NO.

There is a great deal at stake here. we do not know for sure that 2012 is lost, but it probably could be at this point. I do not know what pressures will be placed on the US delegation to change or modify their voting, but rude, nasty and threatening comments only serve to instigate a deeper split between these factions. My concern is that this selection of events might push the IOC to push for the removal of sailing from the games after 2012. Now, one of the reasons that there is so much support for the keel boat class around the world is simply the number of high profile sailors that compete in that class. The Star class does draw some of the biggest names in sailing to compete and it is the view of many MNA's, ISAF officials and others in the industry that this drives greater exposure for the sport. Paul Cayard, Dennis Conner, John Bertrand, Colin Beashel, Buddy Melges, Lowell North to name a few. Is this the correct way to decide Olympic Classes? Some think it is. At the 2007 Ronstan A-Cat Worlds there were quite a few prominent sailors from many different classes, 505's, DN Iceboats, I-14's, Maxi-cats, V40's and about 10 other classes before getting into the many multihull classes represented. There were 16 Olympic medals and over 50 World, National or continental championships competing at the event. Bring that level of competitor over to a multihull Olympic class and maybe there would be greater support. Please do not interpret this the wrong way, the Tornado class has always attracted top level sailors including the likes of Paul Elvestrom. We need to generate excitement, enthusiasm, good will and public support. we need to play cleanly and develop strong relationships to help support this fight. Can we get beyond the anger, the name calling and begin a constructive effort to get this new vote to happen?

Tom its not just the U.S that needs convincing to vote for a multihull, (not necessarilly the Tornado), hopefully in May if not before. Each MNA should be persuaded by good constructive argument that a multihull is worth supporting.

The talk of independance does NOTHING for the multihulls case. I argue for examples of UKCRA to be set up in each MNA and form an IMHC, but for those bodies to work legitimatley and responsibly within the current setups. Logical constructive arguments enhance our cause negative talk of independance at this stage harms the cause.

Maybe I would have best phrased that as "... the end of ISAF as we know it."

ISAF, my dear friends is all about having control.

Currently they can force whatever they decide to do (example of this have been plenty recently) because they are the ONLY viable organisation for all kinds of sailing at this time.

They can FORCE classes to pay membership fees to ISAF because they WILL make your life miserable as soon as you grow to a level where you want to hold larger international events.

When you become a (forced) member of the ISAF organisation you sign away any media rights that you class me have. To the ISAF organisation of course. You also hand over effect control over your class rules to them. Everything must be approved by some ISAF committee and it must be done on their time line.

Basically they muscle themselves in on your revenue stream and class control structure. Of course they plegde to repay you by "bettering the sport of sailing" and if you are lucky they throw you a few crumbs once in a while. Lucky here probably means "being a monohull class" or having a few high placed sailors with blazers sailing you boat type. (That is partly a joke guys !)

What happens if a rival international organisation comes into existance as an alternative ?

They loose their control. Afterall how much control can the rowers excert over the canoe guys now ?

Who is to say that other classes like the moths and maybe high performance skiff for women find it more attractive to join the other organisation ?

If ISAF asks you 3000 bucks for just accepting your class membership application form (not garanteed to be approved mind you) what are your choiced now ? And what will your choice be when a rival organisation is around.

If IOC wants a more lean and exiting sailing venue at the Olympics and ISAF decided again to go for the star and match racing, then how with the IOC look upon a rival organisation who can throw out the boring events and replace them with Skiffs, Multies and Moths ?

Right now ISAF can pressure the IOC to go along as their is no alternative for IOC to turn too short of throwing out the sailing altogether. Again ISAF has a good measure of control because it is currently the only one. That is probably the reason why ISAF feels it can largely ignore the IOC recommendations. They are gambling on the fact that IOC will consider dropping sailing altogether as too extreme an option.

They can't make that gamble when IOC can shop elsewhere.

Without these control principles that come with being to only organisation on this level, ISAF will quickly be regarded for what it is : an inflexible bureacracy that costs more money then it is really worth.

With a viable alternative by its side it will either have to find a way to shape up or accept being marginalized.

Any organisation of this size and standing will find the second prospect appauling and the first prospect too daunting to consider without being absolutely being forced to do it. Either way they will determine that it is alot more attractive to prevent that whole situation altogether. One of the best way to do that is coopting.

You know the tricks. Offer a position as official to some person that would otherwise be capable of creating a rival organisation. Promise the others a committee or two and some future rewards after some more research, rapports, and a formal vote that they assure you is nothing to worry about etc.

Rest assured they will try hard to NOT shape-up ! And try very hard to prevent any serious challenge from developping.


And that is where I fundamentally disagree with anybody who wants to "work from within" while at the same time discouraging any serious efforts at forming an alternative.

Any skilled negociator would actually embrace such efforts ! Why, because they strenghen his negociating position. Because this time has both a wapon and a reward to extract concrete benefits from the other side (and delivery upon them). Because, he can't promise any returns on their desires unless he has some impressive results to take back to his party. And of course this negociator is always very sorry that his hands are tight in this way. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

That is eventually the way it always works. Irrespectibally of heaps of well meaning statements, visions, passions and "lets try to all get along" and other hollow trash.

Wouter

Indeed, and that was the way it was used in my statement.

The Dutch NFB is the same. It cooperates with the Dutch National Sailing Association, but it was formed independedly and remains so.

Wouter