Dear Fellow Iceboaters,
As the new Commodore IDNIYRA Europe e.V. I would like to welcome all of you in the new icesailing season. As you may know Jörg Bohn and Christian Seegers left the Board after our Secretaries Meeting in Riga. Here I would like to thank the great contribution they made for the class. It was a great pleasure to work together with such generous people as Jörg and Christian. We will miss them in the Board.
The new season is already here and some of our sport-mates on the north already are on the ice having fun and doing training for international racing events. Please get your stuff ready, refresh your skills and knowkedge of rules to have a joyful and safe icesailing season.
You already may get a post from your National Secretary with the recent ballot about to make (or not to make) change in the Official Specification to allow alternate material for the halyard. The idea behind this change is that the rope is cheaper, lighter and stronger than steel wire and the terminations are easy to do. If you haven’t received the vote blank yet, please contact your National Secretary asking for empty ballot template, fill and sign it. Please send the scanned copy to your Secretary for further processing.
REMEMBER!
The deadline is end of November.
You can also download the ballot from the link below.
idniyra-ballot-september-2016-en
We intend to have other changes in this season, too.
It turned out that it will be illegal to use 10 runners during the European Championship. Thus we should be restricted to nine runners only. The reason we have to do this is that this restriction is included in the Official Specifications, which is the document (together with the Specification Management System) that should be compulsory for both Organisations (American and European) and any change in those can be introduced by class vote only. Unfortunately we missed the class vote when introduced this rule to use on EC 🙁
My personal opinion, that the number of equipment (runners, sails, etc.) used during the Continental events should be more on the decision of the organising authorities, than regulated in the Official Specifications. The OS should deal with the technical parameters of the legal equipment only.
There are more need-to-change items in our governing documents (inconsistencies, obsolete regulations, etc.), therefore the two Governing Committees started to review, harmonise and rewrite those documents. Your remarks, suggestions would be warmly welcomed in this work.
It is a long lasting dilemma, that our members are over-aged and male-dominated and we should do something to make our class more attractive for the ladies as well as for the younger generation.
This year on the initialisation of our Vice-Commodore Maciej Brosz we founded Perpetual Trophies for Women for WC and for EC. Our American friends did the same for their Continental Championship. The trophies will be awarded for the three best ladies if more than five women are participating on an event. In case of less than five female participants the Champion’s Trophy will be awarded only.
Thus Ladies be brave and come to the Championships! You can win a real good-looking trophy!
The Junior Program started more than a decade ago in Sweden and it passed exactly ten years that the European Board officially designated a Junior Program Manager. The program is a real success. We have more and more youngsters participating in the races and even few of them are competing at the senior championships. We should support them. Financially and morally.
Also we should think about, how to make our sport more popular and attractive for possible newcomers and sponsors. Using of more effective communication and marketing tools in our webpage, widen our social networks, introduce new tracking and broadcasting applications is the answer to that question. We will do our best to introduce them in the forthcoming seasons. On this EC we will do tracking on voluntary basis. The solution we had chosen is KWINDOO. We want to test how this application is working at our conditions of racing (cold weather, high speed, …).
More details you can find on: http://kwindoo.com
Would you have any new idea or suggestion to make our organisation better please do not hesitate to contact me 🙂
So dear Iceboaters, I wish you a very successful iceboating season.
Attila
M100_/)_
Dear Commodore
I need to update you on the intention of the “lex L68” 10 runner rule. Its a rule for keep safety to a long EC race, when we sail the same race for a hole week. And the rule are not a 10 runner rule. The intention and what was decided where “9 RUNNERS + 1 extra STEERING RUNNER”.
The history is that the idea coming from the young smart Finnish sailor Dann Pettersson L68. Then I proposed this on the NatSec meeting.
So Mr Attila I want you to consider this and change your mind about this.
We need 1 extra steering runner to keep safety on a long one week EC…….Think safe /Fredrik Lönegren S8
Dear Fredrik,
I fully understand your reasoning and I am really in favour to use 10 runners during a long lasting regattas such as EC.
BUT
Unfortunately our decision to do this was done not a legal way. As I explained in my post “9 runners” is a general rule included in the Official Specification and it can be changed by Class Vote only.
Our American friends had drawn my attention on this. Thanks for that.
You know that any sailor on the EC can protest the Organising Authority if we will not observe this rule. Hopefully there is no such intention, but I as the Commodore can not take the risk to have an illegal Continental event and cancel the whole Championship if such protest is filed.
Sorry!
Attila
Dear Atilla,
I have notified the safety issue in a direct email to you.
Considering that 9 runners will be allowed at the Europeans we should seriously start thinking of changing the format of this event and putting a maximum number of races, let say 12 for each group. This is still possible as the NoR is still not published.
Safety is our first rule not only on the race course ! I personally don’t like the way we run since few years the European Championship and the European Cup, which were two separate events.
In America in the best case we sail maximum 7 races at the Worlds, this is another approach and game.
We have to clean up many things in our sport and it is time to take same action, saying sorry is not going to solve problems. I am as always more than happy to help.
Best Regards