Class Politics Minutes from the NA Association Meeting in Corpus Christi

gouvernail

Super Opinionated and Always Correct
Certainly one of the attendees at the meeting took minutes and has posted them on line by now. Anyone know the URL??
 
Sherri Campbell dutifully took minutes. These, along with the supporting material presented, will get posted to www.laser.org once the dust settles (don't forget that we have Canadians, NA's, etc. all in the next few weeks and Sherri will be at all of them).

After a hard day of sailing on Corpus Christi Bay the majority of sailors elected to run home to bed leaving 7 dedicated souls to attend the meeting. Still, there was a lively discussion and a lot of great feedback on all points on the agenda. Small but really fantastic input.
 
If you consider that 2 of the seven were Tracy the guy who cares enough to be class president, and Sherri the person we pay to be there...

You just MIGHT be a tad concerned about the lack of people who are willing to do anything at all to make certain the NA Class operates.

The annual meeting of the membership is so meaningless to the rest of us that only 0.025% of the non President non-paid person membership even bothers to walk in and watch.

Consider that the meeting is held during our single most important regatta of the year and that some of the sailors have nothing better to do than hang out atthe club and will do anything to have a chance to chat about lasers with anyone for any reason and...

All of us ought to be seriously worried.

What happens if Tracy, the only North American Officer who consistently monitors class activities and contributes personal time and effort to management of the NA Laser game decides he has slaved enough??


What happens if somebody decides to seriously fund and support the development of a new one design singlehanded sailboat and a related game of racing??

I sure wish I had the money to do it. The field is wide open and nobody is there defending it.
 
well.... if other classes weren't having the same sort of problem, then I'd say "we must be doing something wrong." But other classes are having the same sort of problem -- it's hard to get people to volunteer. I don't know why.

Personally, I try to work at the local level by helping to run a local fleet and by convincing people, one at a time, to go out racing in Lasers. I don't have the skills to do it at a broader level -- I lack diplomatic finesse, I say the first thing that comes into my head even when it's wrong or impolitic, and I don't consider myself particularly effective at organizational change. Fact is, if you look at the intersection of people who sail Lasers (mostly young-ish) and people with solid organizational skills -- most of them are going to be at the point in their lives where they're 110% busy establishing their career and feeding their families. Older semi-retired guys, who have those skills and the time and who want to give something back to the sport, are probably going to gravitate towards a class in which more people of their age / station / situation in life choose to sail.

That's a lot of long-on-diagnosis short-on-cure from me.
 
Chris123 said:
well.... if other classes weren't having the same sort of problem, then I'd say "we must be doing something wrong."

That hurts!!

We can't seriously be willing to take the position..."Everybody else sucks so we can suck too."

I absolutely believe the problem relates to FUN. Somewhere along the way, we quit trying to have fun and decided to do all sorts of other stuff.

The Laser game is simply a form of optional activity. Some of us believe it is lots more fun to play the Laser game if more others share the race course.

Tomorrow in Austin is a perfect example of how fun is being ignored and the sport of sailing is going to harm itself.

I think it belongs in a separate thread so some people might read it...
 

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