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
- Pass them on to your National Representative. If you don’t know who they are then take a look at https://rg65.org/national-representatives/
- Join our Forums and discuss them there. https://rg65.org/community/
- Please do not discuss and speculate in Facebook. It is difficult to follow all the threads and discussions.
I will leave this open for review until the end of March, where after we will look to formally adopt a final version.
An very lastly, here is a link to the Google Document folder where you can find all the current Drafts. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pX1MZhSrGbc2E2cHFeSHXcU6dlwjCWlK?usp=sharing
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.
Sincerely
Wayne