Newsletter No. 4 November 2013.

Council Meeting 14th December.

All F18 National Class Associations (NCA’s) have been informed of the meeting on 14th December. Full agenda details are on the F18 website. Can ALL NCA’s PLEASE let me know of attendees, numbers and names, accommodation requirements so we can make administrative arrangements.  

ACTION PLEASE!!

We are doing our best to keep every sailor involved with F18 development and the decision making process, keep the comments rolling in !

It is important that those who cannot attend, make their voices heard, everyone has an opinion, and a vote, so we need to hear from all countries.

I repeat again the voting numbers based upon NCA membership numbers.

One third of National Class Associations will have to be present to ensure the Council meeting is quorate. Nine NCA’s in total.

Voting will be in line with current membership, as follows:

ARG. 8        HUN. 6

AUS. 8         HKG 1

BEL. 6         IRL 2

BUL. 2         ITA. 14

CAN. 5         LIT 1

CHI. 2         NED. 17

DEN. 1         NOR 3

ESP. 4         NZL 1

EST. 2         POL 1

FIN. 5         SUI 1

FRA. 24     SWE 6

GBR. 8      USA. 10

GER. 18         Total 156.

I repeat earlier administrative comments on the website.

NCA’s present will each be given a voting card, detailing the number of votes.

NCA’s present will each be given a voting card, detailing the number of votes, NCA’s sending apologies, therefore not present, will have their cards presented to the President, who will

vote as they have requested, clearly stating “For” or “Against”

Voting may be required with agenda items, 2, 6, 7, 8c,(11), 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 21, 23. Would all Chairs please ensure that they are voting for their members and send their votes to

the President SEVEN days before the meeting to give adequate time for acknowledgement. (Not in Constitution but administratively sensible.)

NCA’s wishing to apply to hold Championships may have one additional person present to help their presentation.

Apologies.

Todate, I have only received apologies from, VP’s James Ogilvie (Australia), Mike Easton (North America), Ian Rodger (South America) and Jean-Richard Minardi (Switzerland), Peter Davies

(Hong Kong),  

World Championship. July 2014.

Preparation is well under way and Irish Chair, Adrian Allen, will be updating the meeting on 14th December.

I have detailed below the letter from Gordon Hamilton of Hamilton Shipping  who will be leading the effort and support with containers. Will all who are interested please contact Hamilton Shipping direct, sales@hamiltonshipping.com copies to me,

“Hi Don, good to hear from you, I had mentioned to Mark Mackey that I am very happy to help Ballyholme YC make it as easy and cost effective as possible for your members to come to Bangor next summer. Please feel free to share the contents of this email as you feel appropriate

I work for Hamilton Shipping here in Ireland, www.hamiltonshipping.com

Many of your members will be familiar with getting their boats around the world by container and I imagine they will have local contacts where they live, be that Australia, mainland Europe, US or indeed Argentina and can therefore directly access shipping rates. In the first instance they should seek rates for 40ft containers to BELFAST quay, Northern Ireland on a round trip basis ie Origin to Belfast quay, and Belfast quay to Origin. If asked members should advise the Line, they have Hamilton Shipping here in Belfast who will arrange local haulage and customs processing through the Lines local office or agent. Ask them to confirm local costs in advance eg handover or terminal charges

Most of the main shipping lines eg Maersk, CMA, MSC, UASC, MOL, APL, Hapag Lloyd, Hamburg Sud, Yang Ming, OOCL, COSCO, China Shipping all service BELFAST

To avoid excessive costs from these shipping Lines, it is clever to avoid detaining the containers in Ballyholme. We would therefore recommend obtaining a rate to BELFAST quay only, we will then arrange to gain release from the Lines local office and deliver the container to Ballyholme for the boats to be offloaded. I can liaise with Mark as to how your boats and equipment are stored at Ballyholme prior to your arrival, but again it is best to avoid using the Lines containers. It may be possible for Hamilton Shipping to provide some container storage to Ballyholme YC, independent of the Lines and at cost.

In reverse, when it comes to packing up, we can arrange release of the Lines empty container in Belfast docks and bring it down to Ballyholme for loading. Again to avoid punitive costs, you have max 4 hours to load if we have truck and empty container standing by

For any visitors from France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany or Italy, we can recommend Eucon Shipping and Transport www.eucon.ie, with whom we have a very close working relationship. It should be possible to make special arrangements at this end

For any of the members who would like us to seek freight rates on their behalf, please ask them to provide a collection point and zip/post code so we can check all transport costs through to BELFAST. Again loading time at origin will be restricted by trucker unless by special local arrangement.

Once we know origin we can also advise on any customs paperwork which will be required as boats will be processed through customs under temprpoary import conditions

I hope this helps you, please contact myself with sales@hamiltonshipping.com on copy with any further questions at this stage

With kind regards

Gordon Hamilton”

Regatta dates 2014.

Will ALL NCA’s please let me have their major regatta dates for 2014. We did have plans for an international F18 calendar, but response has been disappointing, but we still need the dates.  ACTION Please.

Application for expenditure.

Our President will be providing all the finance information at least SEVEN prior to the meeting in Paris. Would all NCA’s please prepare a budget for 2014 with any requests that they have for monies to be spent in their countries. Suggestions could be for coaching, providing tracking for major regattas, financial support in container movement, hospitality at regattas but for budgeting it is important that we know of cash demands in good time. The aim is to provide as much value as possible for the fees that members pay each year. 

Christmas Presents.

We all need more money into the Class, to support all the requests that we are now receiving, this will give greater value to our members.

This support does two things, it tells the sailing world about F18,  giving a constant image around the world,  and it brings in money !!  So PLEASE go to www.netprintmanager.com/f18

and book your Christmas presents. As we get more and more support then we will be able to widen the range of “goodies” that we can offer. PLEASE remember that the Class does NOT pay for the commercial website and does NOT pay for any stock holding.

As you are planning your 2014 regattas, please support !!

Also I ask that you put a link on all your National websites to this new commercial site.

 

Agenda Item No 18. Coaching development.

We have received the following from Mike Easton. VP North America.

“Objective: Ensure that F18 sailors are able to get good coaching value

Proposal: Use funds that have been set aside for coaching to make a production video and phone/tablet app similar to what Progression Kiteboarding has done for kiteboarding training (http://www.progression.me/).  Obviously we don’t have to offer everything from the start and but the setup of beginner, intermediate, and advanced videos is a good method to follow. Mixing in some free content to get people interested at the beginning would definitely be beneficial. It may be worth asking progression what it would take for them to make some videos for us.

With regard to “certified” IF18 coaches, I believe the best way forward is for each NCA to list “approved” coaches on their website. The definition of “Approved” should be left to each NCA to decide. The IF18 could then gather these lists and create an international database of these people if it wishes. To help drive this approved coaches list the IF18CA would only fund clinics where the coach is “Approved” by the NCA. If coaches are “imported” for a clinic they would need to meet the minimum requirements of the host NCA.”

We look forward to meeting many of you on 14th December in Paris. PLEASE LET US KNOW IF YOU ARE COMING !!

Don Findlay.

Sec. General.