Here's Gary's email, from his website I posted above, there is also a phone number listed on his website. I did call and left a message many months ago, and he called me back, so you might try that.

garyjobson@cs.com

I just took the survey and also listed Catamran Sailor Magazine and the website as my sources for sailing info. Now I'm going to write him. Yes...I'll be nice.

Wow, couldn't agree more Ding.

Mike

Gary Jobson's response to my e-mail:

Karl,

I too was unhappy with the multihulls being left out of the survey. It is getting fixed.
In the meantime Randy Smyth and I are going to cover the multihull America's Cup next week on ESPN 360. We'll have a good chance to promote catamaran sailing.

Gary Jobson

\o/

You go Karl.
You single handedly got Gary and Randy to cover the AC. I bet Jake is gonna haaatttteeee you.He was looking for that spot.

Holy smoke and mirrors, Batman.

Gary and Randy are going to cover the AC because USSA multihull members want them to, and they want to promote multihulls? Are you BLEEEEEPING kidding me???

Call me crazy, but Gary is going because it's the AC (I know, he stayed home last time, but he's the president now). Randy is going because Gary needs someone who knows multihulls.

I'm not going to complain, because any press is good press, especially at that level, but let's not blow too much smoke up our butts.

I seriously hope Gary is being genuine, but even if he is, he's got a really uphill climb ahead of him to change the culture of USSA. They couldn't even get the survey right.

Mike

haha...well, crap. I guess we gotta get that ESPN feed working now. The feed might suck but the coverage shouldn't be pretty good...although, I have a feeling I will prefer hearing Randy talk at the campfire with a beer rather than a camera...but his take will be interesting.

More from US Sailing. This one kind of rubs me wrong, but at this point, I think I am going to let it go.

Hi Karl –

Thanks for taking the time to provide your comments. The multihull sailors certainly are passionate, as we received several comments from your colleagues. Let me present our thought process. Multihulls were considered when we were building this, but the approach was to categorize them into to the broader buckets. Possibly this was not the correct way to think about it. Nevertheless, our goals was to be brief and focused without slicing things too many ways. Towards this end, we may have omitted some options, and for this I apologize. The shortfall I guess was viewing multihull sailors as sailors, and not as a specific interest group or boat design. Our goal is inclusion rather than exclusion. We will store this experience for our future activities. Our plan is to run shorter, more focused studies on more regular basis, and we will certainly treat multihulls differently.

Thank you again for your comments.

Best,

Jack Gierhart
Associate Executive Director
US SAILING
JackGierhart@USSAILING.ORG

Congratulations Karl, you seem to have struck the right tone with them. But I find this repsonse just as disturbing and perhaps more so than the offending survey.

"The shortfall I guess was viewing multihull sailors as sailors"

At least you got a response.

As I didn't receive a survey, what categories did they offer for you to specify your "interest". I note Karl put "other" for most responses.

I don't remember all of them but dingy and keelboat were among the options. Certainly catamaran or multihull were not.

Terry, you didn't get a survey because your membership is not current.

You are Terry Back from Winter Springs, yes? Or are you using another alias?

Remind him to renew. . . at D south.

I suppose that Jack is disingenuous to think that cat sailors are simply "sailors" and others can be "categorized" by "interest" like "dingy" or "keel boats".

Oh for F!@# sake guys! It's a process and this guy is just like anyone one of us that doesn't like getting called on the carpet by the boss! You've NEVER tried to rationalize away a mistake!? And yes Gary does have his work cut out for him, and we need to make his efforts worth it!

This is a customer relations issue. If you were the boss and had delegated a subordinate with the task of "dealing with it" would you be satisfied with the result thus far?

It's the underling being taken to task here, not the boss. The boss might well be interested in how the matter is being handled.

And you still haven't given Terry a boot in the nuts for not being signed up for D south.

So here was the question I see that categorizes sailors:
Which category of sailing do you normally participate?
Select one:
One design dinghy racing
One design keelboat racing
Handicap racing
Team racing
Match racing
Day sailing
Coastal cruising
Ocean passage making
Other
While I agree with all of you and clicked other, I don't think one design dinghy racing would have been to far of a stretch for me and anyone else who races cats. For the rest of the catsailor on here that do not race I think day sailing would cover it.
While I don't think it was wrong of anyone to voice their opinion I honestly don't think it's THAT big of a deal. I think maybe we should have been categories under high performance sailing which would also have covered skiffs and etc. I think to ask for a multihull specific category is asking a bit much since like they said, they are trying to go for a general and broad survey. If they were going for specific they would have had to list lots more than they did including windsurfing, ocean racing, and etc. Along the same lines while I do lots of team racing i'm not sure why they would have their own categories isntead of being grouped under dinghy racing if multihull racing or high performance sailing don't get there own category.
I agree with Karl on Jack's tone being a little harsh and disrespectful to multihull sailors. I think it was just a bad choice of words on his part maybe he meant to insert dinghy sailors which wouldn't in my opinion be offensive and I might make him aware of that.

When I read that same question I initially thought the same, One Design Dinghy, but then I started thinking about how the Tornado was dropped from the Olympics, and how I didn't want to add any more support for the One Design Dinghy classes in the next Olympics, so I also put Other, but If they had had two more categories, "Racing Catamaran" and "Racing/Cruising Multihull" or some such, I think it would provide them with much more info and provide us with more leverage for a multihull in the next Olympics. I didn't want our numbers to be added to the "One Design Dinghy" classes, which already have too many clases in the Olympics.

LOL You crack me up. I didn't say that I was a USSailing member ... only that I didn't receive a survey .... of course, they didn't send me one. I'm not a member.

You're right though, I shouldn't have an opinion on something I'm not a part of.

Why don't you shoot them an email and tell them that if they would show some SUPPORT for multihulls, you would become a member?