I got this letter from Colin Jenkins from England:

You have probably seen this already but it not...

The RYA have made submissions to explicitly drop the cat class from the
Youth Worlds and implicitly to drop the Tornado from the Olympic Games.
There is an online petition available here:-

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/CatamaranSubmission/index.html


There are links to the submissions from there.

CJ

What, they don't like the new French SL16? I thought the Brits loved cats?! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

The RYA love Cats as much as our Historical love of the French <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
I'm not up to date with my history!! but I don't think a single century has past where we haven't had at least one fight with them.

I remember being in a pub in Brighton (Fiddler's Elbow I think), watching BBC news back when the Chunnel first opened. The BBC reporter was in another pub asking the locals what they thought about being connected directly to France. The locals said they didn't like it. When asked why they don't like France, one of the locals said, "Oh, we love France, it's the French we can't stand!"

I still laugh about that one! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

not so keen on the rya just now !!!! their attitude makes me want to hug a french man , or a welsh one come to think of it !

ex- SandyHookBayCatClub New Jersey sailor.

This issue concerns all Cat sailors.

The British equivalent of US Sailing is trying to remove Cat sailors from the London 2012 Olympics just as US sailing tried a few months ago.

Here in the UK we need your help, please sign the petition.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/CatamaranSubmission/index.html

Best wishes
John Ready
Tornado GBR 432
http://www.thereadyfamily.com/London2012

How's Stylesy taking it? That friggin sux!

I have looked at the situation of sailing being included in the Olympic games, in general, and cats in particular, now for over 50 years, and I have to say that opinions that I formed and that I felt comfortable with all those years ago, still feel just as comfortable today.
It has always been my opinion that the Olympic organisers think of sailing either as, a necessary evil, or an inconvenience, or something that they wish would just go away and disappear, or at best some sort of tatty little freak side show tagging onto the coat strings of the MAIN event(s), something that very few people are interested in and that is problematic, at best, to organise and control. Today that is compounded as the IOC find it almost impossible to “sell” sailing as a media friendly event for anything any where nearly as profitable as they sell other events for.
I have always found it just a little strange that “way back” in the dim dark ages when sailing first appeared as an event within the “games”, that there wasn’t any movement from within sailing organizations to keep sailing separate from the Olympic games and instead formulate, and run their own “Olympic” games just for sailing. This always seemed to me to be the logical way FOR THE BENEFIT OF OUR SPORT. After all this is exactly what has happened to the winter Olympics and they certainly have not suffered from this separation.
Why does sailing feel that it needs the Olympic games? Sailing has always been more than competent in organising and running a multitude of “world” events without any assistance from the IOC (as well as the ISAF), In fact I would argue that the IOC and particularly the ISAF have held sailing back more than they have assisted it (not to mention the draconian control DEMANDED and profit bleeding from the sport by the ISAF)
Do we really need any of them?

We definitely don't. All we need is the sea, the boats and people who like to sail them.

ISAF, IOC and Olympic Games are disposable. Those "global" organizations are a bunch of parasites with their own agenda and very little to offer. I am particularly anoyed by the fact that the ISAF is so heavily UK biased. And I disagree with the idea of nations competing with other nations in general. It works like a simulation of war that exarcebates nationalisms, allowing for manipulation of the people in order to justify real wars.

Our sport should be governed directly by the sailors through Internet. I feel revolutionary today!

I'm all for it.

I shall make no secret of it. I active disapprove of ISAF and other organisations that created themselves and have just "assumed" leadership over sailing in the same way.

Wouter

Wow, i didn't realise other ppl felt the same way!

ISAF really is a monopoly, they are the only international sailing organisation.

There needs to be some competition.

As long as it dosn't end up like boxing.

TJ

Actually I think that's a good argument in favor of the ISAF. To ncik's point I think we need competition between sailors, not between administrators. Let's not throw the baby out - I believe the issue we're upset about (and we should be) is lack of representation and consultation. In general I think a single international body per se is a good idea.

I've run into a lot of snotty monohullers. I wouldn't mind a separate governing body.

I wonder if we could work something out with USSailing?

While there may be some very minor "scheming" going on to eliminate multihulls in the RYA and prior USSailing bids, these actions largely results from the fact that multihullers, while having a SIGNIFICANT portion of the racing/sailing scene, do not typically participate in these governing organizations. The answer is not to create a new separate organization to take up the fight, but to join and contribute to the existing organizations that are already in place and forget about us because we are not present.

ISAF would not allow us to call our Wave Worlds in Provo the Worlds, because only THEY could grant that name. In other words, they owned the name. HUH?!?!?!? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
We and the Turks and Caicos were threatened that if this event came off, the sailors would be penalized and so would the country.
We lost some sailors that like to attend other World events, but we still had 30 sailors from about 10 countries racing. And we still called it the Worlds.
In order for them to sanction a Worlds, you must have an International Class. Once done, you cannot make changes to your rules unless approved by them, and other such garbage.

Yet, when they want to approve a Worlds of their liking, they drop all the requirements of the class.

Ironic!

Rick

I am not sure just when the ISAF decided that only they had the right to ordain the usage of the word Worlds, but they have enforced this before and recently. I wish I could remember what classes or boats they refused that right to, but I do remember seeing this issue come up before. I am not a fan of these organizations, but MarkMT is right. What we need to do is to participate and gain visible representation within these groups and get in their faces about the needs of multihull sailors. Until we come together and demand a say in our future, we will always get the short shrift.

I agree that sailors should make their own rules.....but then we still need leaders.....to run a country on popular referrendum would be a disaster for minorities....no homos, no jews, no whoever else was out of favour.
Sailing I am sure could suffer in the same way from rejection of the new or different before calm investigation.

The fact is that the leaders need to be found here, by the people who sail the boats.

Rick,

Sorry but I have to disagree with you on nobody taking control of world championships.

I meet a guy at my sailing club who said he was a “world champion”. I sat down trying to gain more knowledge from these “champion”. After a few beers he told me there were five boats at these “world championships”. Three came from his club and two from a neighbouring club. This guy might have been a great sailor but somehow I don’t think I would put in world champion status for beating 4 boats.

If an organisation doesn’t have control of world championships then we shall have more people claiming to be world champions. Under your system you can run your “worlds”, then I could also run a Wave Worlds and claim to be the world champion.

Under the current system while it is not perfect at least some sort of criteria has to be meet. So when I meet a guy in the bar and he claims to be a world champion then at least another organisation recognised the achievement. There were guidelines meet and this person is worthy to be called a world champion. It wasn’t the local yacht club saying in “ The third Sunday of next month we will call it a world championships”.

But that should be the topic of another thread that will surely get a heated debate

This was my post:
RYA appears to have acted unilaterally to remove catamaran sailing from the Olympics. This is not only unfair to the many catamaran sailors in the UK, but includes disenfranchisement of catamaran sailors around the world who have always had much interest in Olympic sailing.
Present and past US Olympic catamaran sailors are always the leaders among the one-design class racers. They are looked up to as having established their credentials by participating or winning Olympic medals. These medals and such participation are always considered as definitive of world-class sailors. I personally know the names of all the cat sailors from the last 15 years, and know a number of them. It would be a terrible loss to American sailors to lose this valuable element.