The final agenda for the 2022 AGM of the RG65 ICA has been published together with details of the 20221 accounts and budget for 2022, motions to be voted on at the AGM and details of the candidates standing for election to the Executive Committee.
All RG65 ICA World Council Members are requested to attend the AGM at 8PM GMT on 26 March 2022. Details of how to join the meeting and how to vote will be distributed to the World Council in due course.
You will recall that we circulated a set of draft RG65 Rules for comment in December. I am glad to say that we received some great feedback from a number of Nations as well as a few “Thumbs Up” with our proposal.
We are currently re-working the draft Rules with some of your suggestions so that they are ready for final consideration and acceptance at the AGM on 26 March 2022.
There are a number or suggested changes that we feel are too extensive to be included in this revision and so some of them will be carried forward for further discuss with a view to have the World Council consider them for a future version.
We received no notice of additional topics for the AGM by the deadline on 15 January and so the AGM agenda will be as originally proposed HERE.
We also received no proposals for committee members as so the current temporary committee will stand for election unopposed.
Here is a recap of the AGM Agenda
Accounts for the 2021 year and a budget for 2022
Special Resolution to adopt the revised 2022 Constitution
Revisions include
Amending the options for chairmanship of the Technical sub-committee
Ordinary Resolution to select a voting methodology to be incorporated into the Regulations. The options for consideration to be:
Proportional voting with the votes determined by the number of active sailors in the country as set out in Appendix A of the current un-adopted Regulations
Simple voting with each member having a single vote with an additional vote for any member NCA or NCS who were represented at any RG65 Global or World championships sanctioned by the ICA in the previous 4 years. This gives a maximum of 2 votes per member.
Ordinary Resolution to adopt the revised 2022 Regulations
Revisions include
Voting methodology to be chosen through a motion listed above;
Amendments to define a process to be followed should multiple applications for Would Council membership be received from the same country.
Special Resolution to adopt the 2022 version of the Class Rules.
Election of the ICA committee.
I would like to further recap a few points on how the AGM voting shall proceed.
In this instance of the AGM each World Council member shall have 1 (one) vote on each agenda item that calls for a vote.
Votes must be cast by the World Council member or a proxy that they appoint to vote on their behalf.
Special Resolutions require a 2/3rds of votes in their favor to be accepted
Ordinary Resolutions require a simple majority (>50%) of votes cast
In the case of special resolutions each World Council Member is required by the Class Constitution to ballot it’s members and cast their vote at the AGM accordingly.
As I mentioned earlier, we are now preparing the Committee Motions, including the Rules, and plan to release these to the World Council Members on or before 29 January so that you may all consider them before the AGM in March.
The temporary committee are pleased with the progress already made and we hope that you all see the proposed changes as positive steps forward for the class.
If you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to let us know.
The ICA Committee has today announced the date of the next AGM of the RG65 ICA.
The meeting will be held online via video call at 8PM GMT on 26 March 2022.
The full timeline and draft agenda is published on the ICA website HERE
The Committee will welcome member motions for inclusion in the Agenda as well as nominations for the ICA committee. The committee elected at the AGM will replace the temporary committee currently in place.
Any RG65 owner may serve on the ICA committee and all member of the temporary committee have indicated their willingness to stand for election if nominated by a member of the World Council. The committee would additionally like to attract a nominee for the role of Secretary and Treasurer.
Any questions should be addressed to the committee on the email address .
We see some great review and discussion going on regarding the 2022 rules proposal we circulated last week.
We are noticing a few things that are coming up in a lot of discussions so we though that it would be a good idea to share these with you as they may answer some of your questions or concerns.
We have created a section on our forum where we will add is any recurring theme and give you our take on things. Please feel free to comment on these topics in the forum, or build them into your own discussions you are having with your NCA/NCS.
The ICA committee have been working to update the current Class Rules and are now ready to publish the draft for review.
The aim of the re-draft is to bring the rules up to date, correct some previous issues and ambiguities and rewrite them in a modern format that most R/C sailors will already be familiar with.
We have sought to ensure that the draft rules do not unnecessarily change the RG65 class and should not mean that any boat developed under the previous rules will be impacted.
We would now like you to spend some time reviewing the proposed rules and giving us any comments and feedback that you might have. Where possible please can you send your feedback via your ICA representative, the details of which you can find on the National Reps page.
There are 3 documents that you should review:
The main Rules document.
This document includes many temporary drawings so please do not be worried if the drawings do not look good. Once we are ready to make a final release we will include good quality drawings. See the document here
Certification Form
This is the form that will be used to declare that your boat and rigs comply with the class rules and here you will notice a change. Whilst the class rules still support Self-Certification we will now also accommodate traditional measurement and certification as this is already required in some countries. See the document here
Sail Measurement Spreadsheet
This spreadsheet is to be used to calculate the sail area of your rigs using the measuring technique defined in the Rules. The main part of the spreadsheet is unchanged from the one previously in use. See the document here
A lot of work has already gone into these documents and we hope to have them adopted by the class in late March 2022 at an AGM of the RG65 ICA World Council Members.
We will accept comments through until 14 January where after we will finalize the draft and get them ready for the World Council AGM.
One final important note – until these are accepted by the world council they are only a draft for review and should not be used. The 2014 edition remain the official class rules for now.
The ICA is required to announce when applications for membership of the ICA World Council are received.
Accordingly we can announce that the following applications have been received:
Country
NCS/NCA
WC named person
Australia
NCS
Andrew Cook
Austria
NCS
Eric Gielen
Brasil
NCA
Percy Glaser
Czech Republic
NCS
Jan Hyk
Chile
NCS
Jorge Eichholz
France
NCA
Stephan Gibaud
Germany
NCA
Udo Reutter
Greece
NCS
Abraham Onassiadis
Hungary
NCS
Zoltan Illes
Ireland
NCS
Vangelis Simonidis
Italy
NCS
Gianluca Montecchi
Netherlands
NCA
Remco Sol
New Zealand
NCS
Karl Stachel
Portugal
NCS
Jorge Camilo
Switzerland
NCA
Reto Brunschweiler
UK
NCA
Graham Elliott
USA
NCA
Craig Huzway
These applications will be accepted by the ICA after 4 weeks have elapsed unless another person or group from one of these countries also makes an application.
We hope that you are well and you are getting some good sailing in.
A bit of maintenance news. We are currently moving our website to a new host, mainly to save us money. Hosting the site on wordpress.com is quite expensive and we can save around 75% of the cost by moving it to a new provider.
It is a fair amount of work to move things over and there is a chance that there will be some small issues when it is moved, but please rest assured that we will get those issues resolved as fast as we can.
The most dynamic part of the site is the Forums which some of you are using, and it is here that we may see some issues. Posts/topics made in the next few days will not appear on the new site but once things are moved we will try to replicate things again.
Thanks for bearing with us while we make this change.
Good day to you all, and thank you for bearing with me while I have been dealing with some personal topics. RG65 is never far from my mind but I have just not been able to put anything down in writing for a while.
I can confirm that Achille is making some great progress on a new draft of the RG65 Rules that will be opened up for review very soon. He has received some good feedback from his initial group of Tech advisors and he is now converting this input into a workable proposal.
What we did learn from this process is that everyone has many great ideas of how they would like the class to evolve but as you can imagine not everyone has exactly the same view. What remains very important to me is that the future direction of the class must not be determined by me, the ICA committee or the ICA Technical committee. The future evolution of the class must come from you via your World Council representatives.
So for now we are concentrating to keeping the concept of the rules as close to the current 2014 Rules as we can, but converting them into a format which is modern, easy to read and understand, clear so that misinterpretation is reduced, adaptable to local requirements and finally and most importantly, a solid platform to allow future amendments and adaption by the class through democratic process.
So please don’t expect anything too radical when they are published for comment, but please also do not simply reject them because they look different.
Something else that has been happening is that Vangelis and I have been encouraging the various Nations to sign up to our memorandums and we now have 17 countries signed up and forming our Founding World Council, and there are a few more which should soon join. This is a fantastic take up and we look forward to working with you all to take the class forward. You can see details of all this Here and if you click the map image above you can see how the call is distributed around the world.
It is good to see so many countries getting back to sailing after the last few years of disruption and I hope that all of you will be able to get some sailing this year. On the ICA website we have a page where you can advertise your National Championships . If you would like your event to be included then please get in contact with Vangelis using the online Form.
Talking about events, while 2021 will have it limitations, it would be good to see some regional, or international events taking place in the coming years. If you would like to explore the possibility of hosting such an event then please get it touch.
As always, if you have anything that you want to discuss or bring to my attention then please get in touch. I am always available and keen to engage with as many of you as I can.
The RG65 ICA Working Group has now finalised the Constitution and Regulations and after considerable consultation with many of you are happy to publish Version 1 of the 2021 documents.
There has been universal agreement with the final documents, so we are ready to move to the next phase.
Shortly we will be calling for nominations for National Class Secretary and National Class Associations in each country. Please discuss your country’s nomination within your Association, group or fleet in preparation for our request. Each country will be required to sign a Membership Agreement, which can also be viewed on the website (https://rg65.org/association-documents/).
In May we will be calling for nominations for Officers of the ICA
The inaugural World Council meeting will be scheduled for a date in June to formally elect Officers and accept the Constitution and Regulations.
To continue working the Working Group has appointed an interim committee to act in the designated roles. The temporary appointees are:
Chairman
Wayne Stobbs (UK)
Secretary and Web Officer
Vangelis Simonidis (IRL)
Technical Officer and chair of the Rules Committee
Achille Chatin (FRA)
Officer and chair of the Events Committee
Andrew Cook (AUS)
This interim committee will stand down during the first meeting of the World Council to allow the first elected committee to take over.
In parallel the Rules and Events Committees will recruit some committee members from the RG65 community to so that they can start their work.
The Rules Committee’s first task is to review the Class Rules and issue a 2021 Draft for consultation, while the Events Committee will start to work with the nations to set up some international events starting in 2022.
Thank you all for your support so far and we look forward to the next few months where we will look to put all this work into action. We are doing this for and on behalf of you, the RG65 community. To do this we need you to guide and help us, so please let us know if you would like to work with us to continue this work. We need an engaged and committed committee to represent the class, and it is the class who must decide who that committee is.
Yours Faithfully
Wayne Stobbs, for and on behalf of the RG65 ICA interim committee.
As many of you will already know work is going on in the background to create a Constitution for the RG65 ICA to help ensure that the ICA, ICA Committee and the World Council of RG65 Nations manages and promotes the class in a transparent and effective manner.
A lot of progress has been made so far and after some extensive review and edits by our RG65 National Representatives we feel that ware ready to present the proposal to all of you, the RG65 community.
Firstly some background of what it is all about
What is this Constitution we talk about.
Simply put, it the the contract that the ICA Committee must abide by when they do work for the ICA, and how they work with the National contacts, called the World Council. Who is the World Council…. it is Your National Representatives.
This is not a “contact” for/with the Owners of RG65, or in any way the Rules for building and sailing an RG. These are just the terms that the ICA Committee and your National Representative need to abide by when we work together.
They are there to support you to build the class in your Country.
Why is it so long
We need to make sure that we do not just think of the ICA as it is “today”. We need to prepare for the years ahead when we will be a much bigger class, attracting more people and Nations, and running international events. All of this future is built into these documents already.
What is the difference between an NCA and an NCS
An NCA and and NCS are the two types of class associations that you might have in your country
An NCA is a National Class Association and is a formalized association with it’s own Committee and Constitution.
An NCS is a National Sailing Secretary, and is an informal association in a country who appoint a “Secretary” to be the contact person with the ICA.
There can only be 1 NCA/NCS in a country. This prevents a group of sailors from splitting away from the rest and trying to set up they own relationship with the ICA.
From and ICA point of view, it makes no difference if your nation is represented as an NCA or an NCS, you have the same rights and influence within the World Council.
Why is it split in 3 documents, a Constitution and Regulations and a Memorandum.
Usually a Constitution does not need changes in the future, and so this document should be fixed for many years, and any changes will need 67% votes to make any changes, and Only the World Council can vote on changes to this. The ICA Committee can only propose changes, but cannot vote on them
However, there are some things that will change as we grow and learn, and these things are covered in the Regulations. For these we only need 51% vote to make a change. In fact in some classes the committee has full control of making changes without the need to consult with anyone outside the committee. I do not agree with this way, not for the first few years anyway as we must all work together to make the class what we want it to be, therefore the World Council votes on any changes.
The 3rd document, the Memorandum is a direct contract that should be agreed with each country NCA/NCS (as I talked about above), and may end up being slightly different each time. So please view these as a Templates
Voting rights in the World Council
This is probably the most difficult part of the whole process, how many votes does each Nation have.
In some classes the votes are allocated according to how many boats are registered in the country. This is very difficult to maintain accurately
In some classes every Nation gets 1 vote, and nations that have been represented at a World Championship in the last few years get a second vote
In other classes the votes are allocated according to how many people took part in the Country’s National Championship
and
and and….
For a class where we are today none of these ideas will work, but might do in the future. At the same time we need to respect that there are some of you that have 1 boat in your country, some who have 300 or more, and so we need to have a system that respects this. The idea in the Regulations may need tweaking, or if you have some other ideas the please share them
What will the ICA give to you
The whole point of formalizing the ICA through a Constitution is to ensure that the ICA and the ICA Committee are accountable to all of the stakeholders in the RG65, the World Council, every Owner, club and nation that organize events etc etc. The ICA has no intention to favor one nation, or group of nations, over another. The ICA is there to help you service the owners in your country. Some of the things that we will do include:
Give you a voice/vote when making decisions made or proposed by the ICA and World Council.
Support you to establish and grow the class in your Nation.
Give you a set of class rules that are clear and well written.
Give you a mechanism to propose changes to the Rules.
Give you a way to get an Interpretation of any of the class Rules
Create a worldwide racing network, including events at continental and world level.
Create channels and forums for all the RG65 stakeholders to communicate and share information.
Set up a Website to keep everyone informed about that is going on. Vangelis is already well on the way with this. www.rg65.org
What does it cost
There are no costs associated with you our your Nation being part of the ICA.
So, onto the review of our documents.
Please can you review these documents and if you have any comments or suggestions, either:
Add them to the Google Document using the comment feature
Happy Reading and thank you very much for your time and support in the process. Together we can get the RG65 Class to start rapidly growing and very soon have some international events.
