Guys, I am not the enemy. I am trying to balance the wants and desires of some very different groups of people. I am trying to get "better answers" but we only have one championship...

Bert is the voice of the championship committee. There was indeed a lot of discussion, and a vote was taken. I am not hiding behind anything, Bert is the person to answer the specific question.

Like most of you, I would prefer that the championship remain a stand-alone event, but we are listening to lots of sailors who are telling us that they simply cannot support both this event and their annual OD event, and attendance at qualifiers over several years supports that. Bob Merrick stated it here on this forum many years ago, most people chose to ignore him at the time...

As for the discussions about cost, etc. I have stated many times over the past year that this has been between Jack and myself, in his office and on the phone. It comes up in almost every conversation that we have, and he always has the same answer. It is not in the championship committee minutes, because those meetings have been focused on preparing the stand-alone events for 2012 and 2013.

As I mentioned at the council meeting in San Fran, I sat down with Jack in October this year to prep for the meeting, and we discussed this yet again. I noted that people don't believe me, and needed some hard numbers. His answer was simply that we don't even have an event proposal yet, so let's get that going first, and the fees would be part of that discussion at that time.

He is keenly aware that partnering with a class would require a different set of operating rules, which would also relieve his staff of a lot of work, since the classes already do such a great job with organizing these events. So, the costs to US Sailing would be less, and therefore the fee would be able to be reduced.

Regarding sponsorships, the discussions have been nearly the same. Up through this year, we had Rolex as the primary sponsor, and have been allowed to add another sponsor, so long as we didn't diminish the value to Rolex (competing category, logo size, etc.). This was communicated to the club, and rather than coming up with a specific, approvable sponsor proposal, we got more of the same types of comments here: denial, mud-slinging from the past, etc.

At this point, I may just need to be blunt: When someone comes forward with a concrete plan, we can present that and work through the details. If all we ever get is complaints from people that can't let go of the past, nothing will change. The old addage is true: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem...

Mike

EDIT: Another outside-the-box solution I have been thinking about: Since we primarily have two types of sailors (DH sloop and DH spin), would people support a stand-alone championship that featured BOTH fleets? We would need a second trophy, but this could result in doubling the numbers with minimal effort, and would alleviate a lot of the debate about boats to be used.