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.
Hello RG65 Stakeholders. I hope you are all well and getting ready for a season ahead, if you are allowed to have one in your country.
I want to keep you updated on what is going on behind the scenes with regards to the ICA.
As I am sure that all of you will know a proper functioning ICA needs to have a set of rules by which the ICA Committee must adhere, and this also extends to how your National Representatives work with the ICA.
The RG65 have up till now had a reasonably informal constitution and relationship with the class associations/groups in each nation and, while this has been OK up till now, it needs to be tightened up if we want to properly establish ourselves as a Class that attracts the best r/c sailors from around the world.
I, together with a small working party, have created a draft constitution which over the last few weeks was reviewed by some of you, and now it has been circulated to all the National Representatives for comment. We have already has some good feedback and suggestions for change.
It will take a few more weeks to gather this feedback and make the necessary changes before a 2nd review, but hopefully soon thereafter we can put the wheels in motion to have it formally adopted by the World Council. This World Council will be made up of the ICA Committee and 1 person from each country who are your voice at the ICA.
The process to adopt this constitution is set out within the constitution, but generally follows the following process.
The interim ICA committee will announce the date of a Special Meeting of the World Council, giving at least 6 weeks notice of the meeting. Part of the Announcement will be a copy of the final constitution documents to be adopted.
4 Weeks before the meeting each Nation will supply the committee with information necessary to determine how many votes each member of the World Council will have
Because any vote to do with a change to the constitution takes the form of a “special resolution” your National Representative on the Wold Council must consult with all their members and vote accordingly. So you all have a voice on this, and I encourage you to use it.
At the meeting, because it is a “special resolution”, it will need 67% of the votes cast to be in favour for the constitution to be accepted.
I hope that you will accept our proposal for a constitution once it is been adjusted according to the comments from your National Representative as this will then give us the change to take on the next challenges which include issuing an updated version of the Class Rules and hopefully in 2022, at the latest, some International Events.
I must thank all of you who are supporting me, not only Vangelis, Achille, Andrew and Agustin who are my “Working Party”, but all those with whom I am having parallel conversations. I could not be doing this without all of you.
As always, if you have any comments of suggestions, please let s us have them. We are here working n your behalf.
In previous posts I mentioned that I had started to survey the RG65 Nations so that I could get a better understanding of how the RG65 class is established around the world and how the Nations run and manage the class.
I asked the 18 nations that we have contact details for and so far 14 have replied. This is a fantastic response rate and I would like to thank all of you who took the time to reply and share so much information with me. If you have not yet replied, please do so when you can.
I won’t go into too much detail but I think that it is worth me sharing some basic insights with you, and please fee free to add your own comments to this. The more information that I have the better I can direct how we move forwards.
The first part that I gathered information on what how big the class was in each region. It is always difficult to get accurate figures on because boats come an go. Just because someone built and sailed a boat 5 years ago does not men that that boat still exists. So much of this information is a “gut feel” and we cannot expect more. Fredo shared with me that around 1,000 kits for an RG65 were sold in Argentina, but we know that only a fraction of these ever made it to the water.
National Class Sizes
The responses from the 14 Nations show that on average there are 104 boats per nation, with a maximum of 300 and a minimum of 1. This is quite a wide spread as I am sure you will agree.
Number of actively raced Boats
Of those Boats that exist, how many are “actively used”. Here we see the the range from 0% to 100%, and this equates to an average of 30 boats per nation that are active. The largest being the UK with 125 and France with 90, Germany 60 and so on. It would be great if we could, by raising the profile of the RG65 class, get these numbers up significantly.
National Championships
I followed on with some questions about National Championships in the countries. Here we see that 6 Nations hold a National every year, 2 Occasionally and a further 5 plan to start holding National Championships. Of the 8 Nations that currently hold events, the average number of entries is 24, ranging from 10 (USA) to 35 (UK)
Class Associations
When asked whether a Class Association existed in the country, 9 Nations confirmed that they had some sort of class association, and of those 5 were recognised by their National radio sailing authority.
Sailing Authority
Asked what “Sailing Authority” the class sails under, 6 sail under World Sailing, 1 under NAVIGA, 5 under “Other” (I still ned to dig a bit more what Other is), and 1 indicated that they Don’t Know.
The last area that I surveyed was about the future. How they felt a future ICA Constitution and Class Rules should look like, and the results from these are much as I expected.
Future Constitution
50% of the respondents indicated that they would like the Constitution to fall under the World Sailing umbrella, 14% do not mind, and 36% would like to it be totally independent. This needs further exploration and I will enter into some direct discussion with the nations to decide the best way forward.
Class Rules
The alignment of the Class Rules to a Sailing Authority was exactly the same as the Constitution, 50% World Sailing and 36% independent. But what is overwhelmingly clear is that everyone wants the Rules to remain fundamentally as they are. By that I understand the view to be that the boat length, mast height, sail area and self certification concepts should not change.
My Conclusion
Well I don’t really have a clear conclusion yet. I will engage with some of the National Representatives who have not given clear views one way or another so that I can get a better understanding of what direction we should follow, and I will try to complete this within a week or 2, whereafter I will come back with some proposals.
Thanks you for your patience as we go through this process. I need to understand fully what the Class wants before I start to propose any changes, and as you can see from the results above, there are some very differing views. In the end we will need to find a solution that works for the majority.
Please keep your opinions flowing. It is Your class.
We are pleased to announce that we have a new RG65 ICA website which you can find at www.rg65.org
There is still a lot to be added, but in the meantime please head over to the Forum section and start to engage with the RG65 community.
This website will be our main source of information, updates and discussion in the future so please follow us and subscribe to updates in our Blog section.
If you have any comments about the site then please send them to Vangelis, our Webmaster
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