Now may be the time when NAMSA is needed.

Lets do it. How do I make my event a NAMSA event?

Could we set up "divisional" regions and points series that just happen to coincide with hobie regions?

I agree Dave.
On the Open Forum I posted:

I think that we need to break NAMSA down into regional areas in order to make it more manageable.
This would bring it closer to the sailors and make it easier for them to get involved in NAMSA.
Let's divide the U.S. into Divisions, based upon the Alter Cup map and have Division officers.
Groups of sailors, who are currently operating as a Fleet under other jurisdiction, could apply for designation as a NAMSA Fleet.
They could then operate as a NAMSA Fleet with an H-Fleet within.
The umbrella groups like CRAM & Beachcats, could form an internal NAMSA Fleet.
Eventually there could be Divisional and National NAMSA Champions.

A Divisional or Regional system would put control of NAMSA closer to the members.

The NAMSA Fleet designation would make people feel like they had received something for their money.
It would be nice if H-fleets could receive the same number that they currently use.
I am Commodore of H-fleet 97 so I call dibs on NAMSA Fleet 97.

Sam,

I think it's a great idea. We should hear back from the other board members soon.

I can see the virtue of simply using the Division infrastructure that is already in place and even keep the same officers, if they are agreeable.

Keep it going with the ideas, guys!
Rick

Are you in need of help, board members or volunteers? Good time to pipe up!

Side bar. $10 bucks to be a member, $50 to be a sponsor...$100 to be the Grand Pubar. Everyone can contribute on different levels but still belong.

Might help to secure photographers,race equipment,race committee etc..

Rick (and all)-
I could find nothing in the Constitution that prevents NAMSA from assigning "territories", "Divisions", "Regions" etc. so from that perspective I believe we are free to do so. It could be confusing if we decide to use the exact same "designations" as the H* Cat Company and/or USSA. We could use the same geographical boundaries but a unique "identifier" for a NAMSA "region/division/etc." would preclude any confusion in publicizing, etc. an event. We should also be mindful that if we "copy" the H* Cat Company too closely (or use their copyrighted name w/o permission) we may be opening ourselves up to legal issues, and they may be inclined to uutilize that means to "protect their turf".
Just a suggestion-

Kirt Rules Chairman
(Rick- Who are the other two members of my Committee??)

On the Divisions, perhaps just use the areas that we have in our magazine for Schedules. It is divided into 8 different areas and that has seemingly worked out pretty well.
They are:
Northeastern
Eastern
Southeastern
Midwest
South
Mountain States
Southwest
Northwest

Also, Mary has proposed a way to cover newsletter material and also give folks something for their money for starters.
She will add $5 to her subscription price (she gets letters all the time saying that she should raise her rates to make it worth her while) and that $5 would go to NAMSA as dues. This means that all subscribers in North America would become NAMSA members with their subscription.

On the other hand, NAMSA must raise their dues to $20, keep $5 for membership and send the rest as subscription fees. That means that when you join NAMSA you get a subscription to Catamaran Sailor Magazine with it.

While this lowers our dues fee from $10 to $5 it will bring us income we do not have at this time. For example, Mary has 1800 paid subscribers. At $5 that would bring in $9000 per year to the organization. That money could help fund a lot of programs on our wish list.

Let's hear from everyone on this suggestion. The magazine is ready to go to press and we need input right away!
Rick

Rick,

I like your idea. Our constituents get something for their money, and we get the income we so sorely need. I'm all for it!

Bob

Mary and I were just discussing another issue.
Many of the Hobie Divisions have Div. Booklets that print flyers for the different regattas. They will no longer be able to print those flyers for fleets that have open classes. That would mean the booklet might possibly have one or two flyers for the year.
Where would all those other flyers go.
As you know, Mary offers to print flyers at a hugely discounted rate of $75 in the magazine, but is afraid she would be flooded with flyers.
So, we thought this may be a good idea.
Under the auspices of NAMSA in conjunction with Catamaran Sailor Magazine, each April we will have a special publication that has all the schedules for the year from April to April, with all the flyers and arranged by areas.
And for now, we would use the areas as we presently are utilizing in the magazine.
We would still charge only $75 for a full page flyer and it would go out to thousands. Probably a better deal than most are getting with Divisional Booklets that go out to a few hundred.
We could get this going by April 2005.

More on the Magazine as an outlet for NAMSA:
I forgot to mention that the magazine would donate at least two pages as a NAMSA newsletter. More, if required. Submissions by Regional Directors, Board Members, etc. would be needed. If we had a newsletter Chair that would be great. Another position required.

Seems like the most of the Board has re-appeared and so far no disagreements on the magazine and NAMSA idea.

Just to be sure we all understand:
The magazine subscription is going to be raised to $20 per year. Mary will donate $5 of that and the subscriber will automatically become a NAMSA member.
However, there may be some that are against being a member of NAMSA for whatever reason. If that is the case, and they let us know that they do not want to be a member of NAMSA, Mary will keep that money as a full subscription.

On the other hand, the dues for joining NAMSA is $20 and that includes a subscription to Catamaran Sailor Magazine.
If someone, for one reason or another, does not want to the subscription, then the dues for NAMSA should be $10. However, since the magazine is the NAMSA newsletter, they will not be getting news from NAMSA.

Lets hear from ya'll
Rick

sounds good - my monkey wrench bag is out...what about those that already have a Catsailor subscription but want to join NAMSA?

Re. membership dues:
For all new memberships(are you all set up for your first telethon?), I think you should just have one rate..$20. That would include m'ship to NAMSA AND a subscription to CatSailor. This would save you a lot of accounting headaches and let you devote your time to what you guys are best at. I cannot imagine anyone balking at this, but if they should, you/we probably don't want nor need them.
Oh, and look for my check...it made it to the mailbox before I did.

Re. Regatta ads:
What a great idea.
In addition to the Hobie division booklets, our fleet has always sent out personal invitations (and flyers) to surrounding fleets and divisions.

Personal observations:
This is in no way intended to reflect the feelings of my fleet…they are strictly my own. At this point.
Through very hard work, we have enjoyed hosting one of the best and largest HOBIE regattas in the US for the past 25 years (check it out, Ontario Open).
We have also hosted an open regatta, same time same place for the past 10 years.
Why?
Categorically, for the additional income this has generated!
Certainly not for the fun of all the extra work!!
Read this letter from Doug Skidmore, President of Hobie Cat Co. to Rich McVeigh, chairman of NAHCA where he infers that open boats have not contributed to making HOBIE regattas financially viable. CLICK HERE
To that, well, you know what I say!
We are also one of the few fleets who have actually sent in the NAHCA fees collected from these open boats.
Now, how has this hurt HOBIE US, HOBIE Int'l, or NAHCA? Let me answer that question.
It hasn't.
We have continued, year after year, to host record numbers of Hobies, (including “Tigers” when their only venue, at the time, was in fact, open regattas) as well as record numbers of open boats.
What will our fleet do in 2005? Only time will tell, but suffice it to say that I think this latest coup from HOBIE could well be the lethal axe.
If that becomes the case, let me “thank “ HOBIE now.
I am very disappointed that HOBIE and its constituents continue to act like spoiled children regarding this “open boat” issue. Without anyone's help, HOBIE continues to alienate me and other customers.
I have sailed in many Hobie Regattas, as well as many open multihull regattas.
Yes, I criticize HOBIE CAT COMPANY, and yet, I love Hobie Cats.
I have owned seven different Hobie cats over the years.
I presently own 1 TheMightyHobie18, and 2 H16s (oh, and did I mention my SC20?), all of which are in excellent sailing condition. The reason I own these boats, is that time after time, I have introduced friends to the "Hobie Way of Life" by loaning them a Hobie to enjoy on our beach.
Many have gone and purchased their own Hobies.
Some have bought competitors boats.
Ah well, such is life.

HOBIE certainly doesn't care about me or any of you as a customer.
They are very short sighted in their plans and seem to be more inclined to satisfy their own egos than to make their Company successful and us, remain Hobie owners.
For the record, my all-time boat of choice and my "daily driver" is...yup a TheMightyHobie18! Thumbs up!!!

I believe Mary is thinking about whenever someone renews or subscribes for the first time -- can't be done retroactively.

I see what you are saying. Maybe someone wants to join before the have to re-up. Hmmmmm!

How about sending the label on their magazine and $5?
Too confusing perhaps
Put that Monkey Wrench away!
Rick

What is the correlation to these regions compared to the Hobie divisions? (I don't have the mag in front of me)

The attachment has the map and legend
Rick

ok, so where is Canada in all of this? I propose that you create some regions for the various parts of canada. How about: Ontario, Quebec, atlantic, mid-west, British Columbia as separate regions?
Dave

For Sure!

However, and correct me if I am wrong, that most of the activity in Canada is relatively close to the USA border.
I know that in collecting data for our Schedules Pages that most of the events I hear about are on Lake Ontario and we place them in the Northeastern Section.
There is also activity near the border between Ontario (a huge Province that completely encompasses the Great Lakes) and Minnesota that we place in the Midwestern Section.
Most of the activity in the west is in the Vancouver area and has been placed in the Northwestern Section
There has never been any activity that the magazine has been aware of that in the far north, nor is there much in the New Brunswick or Nova Scotia areas.
I know there are active racing fleets in the area of Calgary and Edmonton, but we never hear from them. If we did, they would fit perfectly in the Mountain States Section.
For NAMSA we would simply have to extend our boundaries north to encompass those areas.
I am pretty sure that the folks in Upstate New York and Ontario and Montreal all work pretty close together in scheduling regattas already.
Wouldn't this work for a NAMSA Region as well?

My thinking is that we really don't want an overabundance of Regions. As an example of exaggeration, we could end up with 48 states and 8 or 9 Provinces as Regions.

Your thoughts?
Rick

Yes although we are close to the US, there are a lot of issues that are specific to us such as: boat demographics, currency, shipping, travel, border issues, and political issues. So, my thinking is that we have enough things that make us different that we should have a few separate regions anyway, but some could be combined, for eg, Quebec and atlantic could be one.

Rick-
Two years ago when NAMSA started, "organizations" (like CABB, CRAW, etc.) could join (or actually were encouraged to at that time) and we had proposed to call them "Chapters". How does this proposed Division scenario fit in with some of the existing (are there any still?? ) Chapters? I don't think the CRAW folks would want to end up in 2 different NAMSA Divisions, for instance. So I suggest we make sure there are no such conflicts prior to setting the Division boundaries.
Second, at that same time several of us had suggested a CS subscription being a NAMSA "perk" and putting the NAMSA news in CS. It was ruled out because it was felt not "fair" or financially viable for CS to "subsidize" NAMSA in the area of magazines/newsletters (reference our various E-mails of February 2002). What has changed financially to make this same idea great now when it was voted down then?
By the way, I thought it was a great idea then and I still do personally, but you had nixed it at that time/

Kirt

The difference about the magazine is that Mary is raising the subs. price to $20, but will not keep the extra $5, but will rather send that to NAMSA. Should a subscriber decide they do NOT want to be NAMSA member, they can say so and she will keep the $5 and hopefully make a bit more profit.

Before, as I recall we had been around $10 and had just raised the subs. rate to $15. She was concerned at the time that we could not go any higher. However, since there are many folks that say we charge way too little.
I know she charges way to little for ads, if you check around the business and see the really high ad prices.

As for the Chapters, that never flew. We really thought there would be lots of groups that would join, but we only ended up with two or three.
I think we need to revise our thinking and go for individual memberships and set up regions. But, I also think we ought to welcome groups like CRAM, CRAW, et al as Chapter nonetheless. Then set some dues schedule for them, i.e., $50 per year.

Rick

So....not much activity on this thread in the last week...(still lots of noise and rock throwing over on the other thread)....but I am really hoping we make the most of this opportunity to make NAMSA THE organization FOR cat sailors BY cat sailors.....did I miss something? How does this move forward? Our fleet will be gathering in two weeks and I'd like to be able to speak to progress in getting NAMSA established and potentially propose we join as a fleet member....

Joe Leonard

Actually, just picture a duck on a mill pond. Quiet on top but paddling like hell underneath.

This particular forum is for open NAMSA discussions and we really want folks to come here and tell us what they want.
Meanwhile, we have a Board Forum where we are trying to get things done legally and with full membership vote. And we do want to maintain that -- every member has a vote.

We are planning a special full membership meeting on the 18th in a live chat room, that the President is allowed to call with 15 days notice. At that time we want to make some bylaw changes to make voting a little more simple, change the dues to $20 for Individual Membership that will include a subscription to Catamaran Sailor Magazine (and the magazine will dedicate at least 2 pages or more for NAMSA News.
We also have to appoint some new blood in positions that have been either lax or vacated. So far, I have appointed Sue Bennett of the Shark Class as the new Secretary.
By the way, when a position is vacated between General Meetings, the Pres. may appoint someone to that position until the next election. (just want to make sure I am doing this the legal way)

And, we have some new committees that we need to form and are looking for folks to head those up.
For example, we need someone to head up a committee to form different NAMSA regions.
Someone to handle sanctioning of events,
etc.

Perhaps I can get Jake to jump in here with some of the other things we need to discuss.

Thanks for your interest, Joe, and hope you fleet is responsive. NAMSA needs them and they need NAMSA.
Rick

I'd like to join as an individual, but where do I send my check?

It would be easier for me to just buy my membership from your online store, but when I go there it only charges $15.

I also think you shouldn't be afraid to charge. People who balk at $5 aren't in this for the long haul.

While we think it is pretty much a done deal with the subscription and NAMSA, NAMSA still has to vote in the new dues. We are having a vote on the issue on the 18th of the few paid members we have.

Should all go as planned, we will change the subscription price schedule on the 19th. And hopefully, NAMSA will change their dues schedules as well.

If it is not approved, then, duh! we are back where we were a year or so ago -- nothing to offer the new members except ideas.

By the way, the reason we could not meet until the 18th was that we need to publish a notice 15 days before a special meeting.., and we want to be sure we do it right and legit.
Thanks
Rick

Thanks for your response Rick....to be honest an occassional summary update from you should go a long ways in helping me and others like me who may be trying to talk to our local fleets about joining NAMSA. For example, at our fleet meeting in two weeks, if I can show how many fleets have joined recently as a result of all the current activity, as well as how many fleets are members over all, it should help build a case....

I also want to comment on making certain you set the dues (fleet & personal) high enough to ensure a first rate organizational effort. Without factory backing, this organization will have to be able to pay all expenses, organizational, promotional, event related, and otherwise out of dues, and event "taxes", etc....

I'm actually very excited that this might be a way to accelerate Formula style racing in North America....which personally I am a big proponent of because it puts the future of our sport in "our" hands as opposed to allowing our manufacturers to dictate how we enjoy our sport and spend our liesure time. And ultimately should help unite us all as opposed to building exclusionary walls.

Sailing by sailors, of sailors, for sailors....

Regards, JL

The promotion of classes is one of the highest goals of NAMSA. And I agree that Formula racing will be big in this country with some good promotion.

We are all pretty anxious to get NAMSA back on track again.., and I believe the help of the magazine is the answer to most of it -- one, a way to communicate with members, two, a way that financially puts NAMSA in financial security (with $5 from each subscriber to the magazine, that could come to nearly $10,000 per year).

And NAMSA and the magazine would both grow together.
Biggest problem is getting a NAMSA Newsletter Editor (Hmmm! Bonnie comes to mind, Jake)to gather stories and news from the different Regions and get them to the magazine for publication monthly.

Rick

or Catsailor mag. About a year ago I made note that Catsailor should segway the membership fees through your magazine is this possible still. Bob Grubb DSYC

Hi Bob,
Well, when we first re-formed NAMSA we ran into a big stumbling block. We had no form of communications with the members.
Catsailor Mag could not afford to offer free subscriptions to members and yet that would have been the best possible way for members to communicate.

However, Mary is now in her 10th year of the publication and has heard many folks tell her she doesn't charge enough for the magazine (that's pretty rare to hear from anyone ). So, she decided to add $5 to the subscription price and include a NAMSA Indiviual Membership. She will then forward the $5 to NAMSA.

NAMSA, on the other hand, is in the process of agreeing to have dues of $20 and that would include a subscription to the magazine. They would forward $15 to Mary.

At first NAMSA and Mary will have to keep a close eye on duplication, but between Bob Blackington and Kathy, our bookkeeper, we should be able to keep things straight.

The important part is that NAMSA will finally have an outlet for information. The magazine, which already publishes a list of events, will be a great sounding board for NAMSA and all the news that needs to be heard by members.

The best thing for NAMSA is that it will immediately (within the first year anyway) inherit almost 2000 members and their dues. Finally, NAMSA will be able to afford to accomplish some of their initiatives

Not sure if I answered your question. If not, let me know.
Thanks,
Rick

Thanks for quick response Rick,you know so many of us here in Delray and beyond for that matter really do not realize what uniting and joining a national organization can do thats why we all sit on the fence but I guarantee the next time the city puts the crunch on moving the boats we will be glad Namsa will be strong. We have a lot of boats here on the beach they are akin to puppies from the pound, your all over them when they are new and then the boat is forgotten,most people do not even realize that they are paying a renewal permit they just pay it! Thanks Bob GrubbDsyc....

One of the main purposes is to save beach access somehow. It is great to see groups like ya'll in Delray and those at Clearwater that have worked hard with local governments to save some space to sail. It is a tough task.

Appreciate all the help we can get from folks like you.

Rick