[Rg65coa] RG65 News for January 2018

[rg65coadir via Rg65coa]

This message is going to be a bit long because I have been distracted by the interaction between the RG65 International Class Association (ICA) and the International Radio Sailing Association (IRSA). 

That interaction has completed. Bottom line for us: nothing has changed. The ICA still owns the RG65 class name, class symbol, and class rules. A joint statement has been issued and can be read here:

http://rg65.org/news/future-directions-for-the-65-class-a-joint-statement/

The IRSA has established their own 65cm class for events they control. These rules can be found here:

https://www.radiosailing.org/classes/65class/technical-class-rules

These are completely separate from the now and future RG65 class rules and do not supercede our rules in any way. 

It took a lot of time and effort on the part of Fredo Vollmer, the head of the ICA, and Cris Bolle, USA 913 to get to this point, and we owe them our thanks. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work with them.

I also owe our membership a report on how all this came about, especially considering the chatter and rumors on social media. Not everybody is interested in this stuff, so what I am going to do is take questions from those who are, anonymize them, answer them with additional material that I feel is important and put the results up on the rg65usa.org website. So if you have questions, please email me before Feb 15, either by replying to this email or sending one to rg65 at theamya.org. If you don't have questions, feel free to keep on building and sailing like always. Nothing has changed.

In other news ...

Darrell Krasoski, the DF65 class secretary and I figuring out how best to work together to insure a smooth relationship between the two classes. One issue is the unknown number of DF65 owners who registered in the RG65 class before the DF65 class was formed, and who today have no interest in sailing anything other than a Dragon Force. If that is you, please email me as above so Darrell and I can get an idea of what's involved. No action will be taken, we just want to guage the situation. Darrell and I are also going to work on sample Notice of Race and Sailing Instructions for clubs who want to run RG65s and DF65s in the same event and score them separately.

The financial statement is given below, and as you can see we're in pretty good shape. Ray Seta, the AMYA president, has asked that classes look for ways to use their funds to give back to the members. One thing I want to offer to clubs is financial support for a Sportsmanship Trophy to be awarded at significant events. The idea is that this trophy would be awarded by having the competitors vote on who they think best exemplified the Corinthian spirit which is the basis of our class. The idea is to give tangible form to the respect a competitor has earned from his peers. In our club we name it after a deceased member whom we all admired, and award it at the Rio Grande Cup. One year it went to a 17 year old skipper, which made me feel very good.

Upcoming events:

RG56 Nationals: March 3-4, Melbourne FL

Rio Grande Cup, April 21-22, Albuquerque NM

Region 3 Championship, spoken for but not yet confirmed.

Check the events page on rg65usa.org for links and updates. We really need clubs to step up and hold regional championships and open events like the Rio Grande Cup. We'll do everything we can to make that as easy as possible, just email me.

Financial Statement:

Balance as of Feb 2017: $770.53

Income as of 12 Dec 2017: 22 registrations @ &7.00: $154.00

Interest earned: $0.40

Balance before Expenses: $924.93

Expenses: 22 PayPal fees @ $0.50: $11.00

Net Balance as of 12 Dec 2017: $913.93

Cheers,

Earl