UKFFA Members Vote….!!

If you have just received your 2015 members pack from FFA you will see that we have a members vote this year.

The vote is basically to do away with restrictions that prevent us buying more than one suit of sails per year, excepting for new boat purchase and Worlds….

This ought get your interest!!

– What do you think the impact would be on various parts of the fleet?

– What impact for Club sailors?

– What do you think it will do to the market for new and used sails?  Good or bad?

– What will be the effect on potential newcomers to the Class?

– Is it all good news for the sailmakers?

If you haven’t yet filled in your voting form, don’t forget to do so.  Scan your forms to the Association Secretary if you can’t get to a post box.  If you are not an Association member, this vote might be one worth joining for!!

Keep your eyes peeled for announcements at the Association website.

Leave replies to this blog to share your opinions. Just hit “Reply”…..

 

 

 

FFI Rule Change Proposals…..!!

Those FFI Rule Changes – what are they ???

We are asked to vote on six items – nothing too contentious this time.

1/ If you have won a World Championship Title (Steve , pay attention!!)  you can have a gold coloured insignia on your mainsail.  Our version of the yellow jersey – a nice idea, I reckon,

2 and 3/  You are allowed sail shape indicator stripes on your main and jib.  Another good idea (as I get older)

4/ FFI at its discretion may not require sails for measurement at Events if they were already measured under the new ISAF IHC system.  Very sensible….

5/ Tidying up definitions of “Officer” and “Executive” in the Constitution and clarifying what the Commodore does.

6/ Obliging National Associations to copy AGM Minutes to FFI.  Sensible.

So all easy – lets outvote New Zealand in 2013 !!

Click here for the full set of rule change proposals.

Click here for the ballot form

If you’ve run out of time, print the form, fill it in, scan the image and email it to the BIFFA Secretary.

 

More on “Non Boat Owners Don’t Get a Vote” … From Paul Taylor…..

Totally agree, many would say that crew contribute hugely to winning teams, so many places up for grabs on a good spinnaker run, so many places lost if the crew makes the slightest mistake with the kite. yet they have no say! But its not just our class this applies to!

How Many of Us Voted….???

Here’s a little gem for you.  Last time we had an Association vote on a rule change, how many of us voted??

Sixty Five….  What’s all that about??  Sixty five out of about 350-400 members (and 700 boats). In the same vote, the Aussie fleet had about 110 votes if I recall – out of a fleet half the size of the UK fleet. How could we be so apathetic that we were outvoted by our Australian pals??  I just don’t see it??!!

 

When is The Vote on The New Rig??…

Not unreasonably, a few people have asked lately when the much heralded Vote on The New Rig will be held.  It’s a good question….

First I think there is an FFI rule which enforces a time lag between votes on rule changes. This is an FFI Vote, remember…. It might be a gap of four years or something like that. So it really depends what the last set of rule changes were ratified by ISAF at a guess.  I’m thinking that very possibly it will be very early in the New Year…..

Has everyone in your Club, especially the owners with strong opinions, made sure their membership fees at BIFFA are up to date.??  If the Vote goes against their personal wishes on the matter, they’ll be spitting if they didn’t get the chance to vote. For myself, I feel it’s really important that the vote is as well populated as possible. The changes are very far reaching, and the difference at one end of the fleet will quite likely be different to the other. So if you know someone who has not joined, press them into doing so without delay. Fleet Captains – you’d better get on it!!

Rumour has it that there will be at least three things to vote upon.

1/ Should minimum weight be reduced (10kg or 20kg, I’m not sure)

2/ The New Sail Design

3/ Whether the rule on woven sailcloth should be relaxed  i.e. mylar is allowed

However, the bar chatter is that FFI may surprise us with some more options. How about allowing a GNAV instead of a kicker for example??  Interesting….  And that would open the way to some more ideas which may help fleets that have a family bias…  Pure speculation in our Bar… We shall see…

BIFFA Owners Database … And the Fleet League Table!!!…..

This is the third item we have written based on the BIFFA members database, which is accessible to all Fifteeners who have paid their fees!!  And the vote on the new rig is coming up, so if you miss your chance in that you’ll be spitting mad…. probably double spitting if you’re a classic/silver owner – so get signed up!!

I need a new name for the database though – it isn’t the case that it is a list of current members. So it is really somewhat more akin to an “Owners Database”…

In Years gone by, the FF Year Book used to rank the number of boats(members actually) per Fleet across the country. I think the data showed current year and previous year so you could see the trends. I don’t know about you, but I used to study that avidly. We don’t seem to publish it now, even online. Pity… As a competitive natured Fleet Captain you do tend to react to public data which shows you where you rank in the world race!!

Back to the owners database…. if you click on the column Header for “Club”, the whole thing will be ranked by Club Fleet.

I think I have counted elsewhere on the BIFFA website, that there are 48 recognised FF Clubs. We also know too that about 32 of them are big enough or active enough to run an Open Meeting – you can work that out from the BIFFA calendar. Well, I have been through the Owners list – and if you count all the fleets with three or more boat owner/members there are 42 Clubs.  We should remember that according to FFI a Club will get “Fleet Status” if it has six boats whose owners are members of the National Association – on that basis we would have around 25 Fleets approximately.

It’s only an indicator as to what is going on. Given the 500 names that are on here, I feel there must be 400-500 names who are not. There surely must be somewhere between 500 and 1,000 FF’s still sailing in the UK…  Hayling and Windermere, for various reasons have a very high %age of their owners in BIFFA and the rest of us should take note.  But as a rule of thumb, maybe you can take the numbers of members that I list below, and then double it for the number of boats in the Club… So if I say they have 3 BIFFA members, there may actually be around half a dozen flying fifteens there.  Here we go… your table of Fleet Sizes…

Big Fleets :-

30 members – Hayling and Windermere (Hurrah!)

24 members – Bewl

23 members – Grafham and Parkstone

Medium Size Fleets:-

Derwent (17), Llangorse (16), Dovestone (15), Datchet (14), Draycote (12), Chew (12), Burton (11), Carsington (10)

Small Fleets :-

RMYC Poole (9), but together with Parkstone would make this a big FF Community

Northampton (9),  Middle Nene (8), Broxbourne (8), Cardiff Bay (8),  Loch Lomond (8), Solent (8), Bassenthwaite (7), Rutland (7), Clywedog (6), South Windermere (6), Loch Earn (6)

Really Quite Small but Enthusiastic Fleets:-

Holy Loch (5),  Loch Ard (5), Loch Tummel (5), South Cerney (5), Solway (5), Queen Mary (5) , Bala (4), Hartlepool (4), Humber (4), Lerwick (4), Llyn Brenig (3), Notts County (3), Ogston (3),  Royal Corinthian 3 (Waples Land – Hurrah!), Torbay (3), Ullswater (3), Llyn Brenig (3), Aldeburgh (2)

So that’s it !! The FF Blog’s Four Leagues of Flying Fifteen Fleets sailing in UK. I’d hazard a guess that just by letting the Fleet Captain’s know where their Fleet stands in the rankings will empower them to go out and find the unjoined owners – and get them signed up before the vote on the New Rig comes out of FFI  !! We’d expect that many Fleets will feel under-represented in this league table. The number of boats in your boat park will feel a lot larger in many cases. So get signed up!!

And how does our Fleet at Datchet fair??  I would guess we are a good average to work from.  We have 14 showing on here. We have three boats in our loan boat program, and a couple of members I think own two boats (lovable lunatics..!), so that’s maybe 20. Last time I counted there were about 30 boats parked in FF row. So FC, we have about ten boats not joined to BIFFA… who are they and why not?!!

BIFFA Membership… and the New Rig vote….

I’ve been thinking a lot today about the sentiments from the Draycote Fleet contained in yesterday’s blog regarding the new rig.  I’ve got two things on my mind….

Lets set aside our friends at Draycote though – what about our Fleet? Firstly, I’ve always been a member of BIFFA – but even after all these years I’m unsure who in our club fleet has joined and who has not. I understand too that everyone has a choice about these things. If you own an older flying fifteen that you only race at Club level, then  BIFFA membership may not seem worth it.  However, it is likely that owners in this number may well be the ones who are most concerned about the new rig being a significant cost driver, splitting the class, increasing depreciation, and those kinds of issues. Ironically if they are not members, they will be frustrated if the vote is positive. In which case, I would argue that they should join BIFFA right away to be able to vote on the new rig and ensure their voice is heard.  If one really is concerned about increased ownership costs, and increased depreciation, then, lets face it, these figures dwarf the £35 cost of joining BIFFA this important year.  (Is the fee £35?.. I forget…) So thought number one is, “everyone should join BIFFA this year, and everyone should vote…”

My second thought, is that FFI ought to ensure that when this vote does come along it is two votes not one. I have a feeling that the ground swell for the new rig design may be stronger in its support, than the ground swell opinion for mylar or laminate sail cloth. I really like the new rig design, but speaking purely for myself I am pretty indifferent to moving to more expensive sail cloth with shorter life.  If I am in any way typical of the average Club sailor (which I am…), it would be a pity if the vote went against the new rig as a whole, mainly because of the mylar issue.  I very much hope the FFI vote splits the two questions….

I wonder how our friends at Draycote think about that idea? Perhaps they would write in and tell us or leave a comment on the blog…..

Could be a bumper year for fee income at BIFFA, of course…. 🙂