YouthSailing, the RYA and Catamarans

Bob reply: My interpretation (which may be wrong) is that the RYA get 2 votes of the 40, yet smaller nations get effectively half a vote. There has been a view banded around that the RYA may be hostile to Cats but there are enough Pro-Cat nations in the ISAF to keep them in the Olympics (and may be in the youth worlds). This may not be the case if the RYA are particularly influential and remain negative in their view of Cats. I think UKCRA were finding out how much influence the RYA have.

Anyone know what the point of the UKCRA question was? I ask because if they want the RYA's own policies "weighted according to size of membership" cats and boards will get little attention and the RYA will spend most of its time concentrating on cruiser/racer or offshore yachts, which is where most sailors hang out.

Bob reply: My interpretation (which may be wrong) is that the RYA have 100,000 members but no one looks to see what sort of boat they sail wrt how much influence in ISAF the RYA have.

"UKCRA produced a scorecard matrix that had already been used to go through this process and that clearly showed multihulls come out as the top scoring class which best satisfies the requirements of the above criteria."

Interesting - was the scorecard created by an unbiased source? Was it filled in by an unbiased source? Where did the info used to complete it obtained from?

Bob reply: I think this scorecard shows how successful that the recent youth catamaran sailors from the RYA training programme have been at medalling on the world stage. From a small group they have done fantastically well. It is ironic that if the RYA continue to de-emphasise Cat Sailing in the Olympics that none of these talented sailors will get the chance to compete in the Olympics. I see by the way that the Hobie 16 Worlds are ongoing at present and that the UK has no representation. I think that this is a direct result of little support from the RYA - despite the fact that the Glovers would have stood a very good chance of taking Gold.

By the way, at least some cat sailors have said (on the Oz Cat Sailor forum) that they have been signing the petition repeatedly using all their different email addresses. Not good stuff, it really must hurt the credibility of the petition.

Bob reply: Yes understood, but this is true for all E-petitions. There is little that you can do to stop this. We have exceeded 2200 votes and I suspect that multiple voting does not impact it by more than 10-15%. The international voting is also interesting, which somewhat short sightedly, I had not anticipated. UKCRA have done a breakdown to show the demographic location of the voters, but ".com" dominates so it is not very satisfactory.