Fwd: IOD Executive Committee Updates
Graham Siener
From: Greg Mancusi-Ungaro <gre...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 23, 2024 at 10:00 AM
Subject: IOD Executive Committee Updates
To: Rick Thompson <r...@falcon.bm>, Ted Murphy <edwardj...@gmail.com>, Shawn Mulrooney <shawnmm...@gmail.com>, <sie...@gmail.com>, Tormod Lie <t...@sifag.no>, Jennifer Miller <jenni...@msn.com>, Michael Fortenbaugh <comm...@myc.org>, Doug Witter <dougla...@gmail.com>, Marc Migliazzo <marc.mi...@gmail.com>, Carolyn Corbet <corb...@northeastern.edu>, Pierre Uberto Crosby <pierre...@ubertoltd.com>, Nicholas Schoeder <ph...@nicholasschoeder.com>, Paul Zupan <pzu...@yahoo.com>, Rich Pearce <rsp...@aol.com>, Robin Johannesson <iodsa...@gmail.com>, Martin Rygh <marti...@hotmail.com>, Kevin Horsfield <hors...@northrock.bm>, Jonathan Farrar <jft...@gmail.com>
Cc: Courtenay Jenkins/USA <Court....@cushwake.com>, Tom Price <tpri...@gmail.com>
Hello from Marblehead –
This week included the third Tuesday of the month, which means that the IOD Executive Committee held its second regular meeting of the calendar year. In fact, the EC has already met three times in 2024, as we called a special meeting in late January devoted entirely to 2024 IOD World Championships invitations. Your EC -- Tormod Lie, Peter Wickwire, Hans Johannson, Phil Cox, John Henry, Oliver Parsons, and me, are doing their best....
In an effort to communicate more frequently and transparently to the Fleets, this short note inaugurates what is hoped to be regular updates that summarize the activities and decisions of your Executive Committee.
Would forward this report to your fleet owners, and to any other interested members of your fleet or sailing community.
And please, let me know if you find this kind of communication valuable - it if is, we will keep in on the list of things to do, but if it isn't we will try something different.
/Greg Mancusi-Ungaro
World Class President
617.803.5959
**
20 February 2024
To: Fleet Captains
Fr: Greg Mancusi-Ungaro/World Class President
Re: February Update on World Class Activities/Executive Committee Actions
2024 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP INVITATIONS
Thanks to your timely submission of Fleet Qualifier Results, plus a lot of
hard work by World Class Secretary Oliver Parsons, the 2024
Fleet Size ranking was determined by the end of the second week of January. This was the first year that the new IOD Tiebreakers
for Fleet Size were used and they worked perfectly – breaking ties between
Chester and Fredrikstad, and adjudicating the three-way tie between Tonsberg,
Long Island Sound, and San Francisco. Kudos to the ad hoc committee who put
these rules together in 2022 – we are already benefiting from your hard work.
With the Fleet sizes rankings in hand the process of allocating invitations for the expected 20-team regatta ran smoothly. An unprecedented four(!) requests for Champ Reg 4.1C Special Invitations were submitted to the EC – each requiring careful consideration. The EC held a special meeting devoted only to those four requests, and at that meeting there was a spirited discussion about their various merits. Unfortunately for the requesting parties, none of the requests meet the high-bar for special invites suggested in the CRs, and the EC voted unanimously to not issue any special invitations for the 2024 Championship.
Following that meeting, the final Fleet invitations were allocated, and delivered to the Fleet Captains. 48 hours later, the field for the 2024 IOD World Championship was filled. The entry list is included at the end of this email...
2024 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP FORMAT
One of the chief responsibilities of the EC is to act as the steward of the
IOD World Championship – to manage the invitation process, and to ensure that
the racing is conducted under the provisions of the Championship Regulations. Frequently Fleets organizing championships
come to the EC with requests for format alterations, and the EC does its best
to support local organizers, while taking as much care as possible to deliver a
Championship event that honors the spirit of the IOD Class. Your EC treats this responsibility with great
seriousness, and requests for format changes demand careful consideration.
In late 2023, the Norway Championship Organizers presented the World Class Executive with an ambitious proposal to hold the 2024 Event under the provisions of an experimental appendix in the racing rules – appendix UF, Umpired Fleet Racing. This is a format used for the medal races in the Olympic Games, and for some Fleet racing in other classes around the World. It is based on the format of one-the-water umpiring that has been used for years at team racing and match racing events. Umpired Fleet racing has been tried once before in IODs, at the 2016 World Championship in San Francisco.
This proposal was examined in depth, with members of the EC reaching out to IOD teams who sailed in San Francisco, to International Judges and Umpires, and to Class Associations who have used this format in their major events. Throughout the evaluation process, the Norwegian organizers were consistent and clear – their understood that their proposal was experimental in nature, and they completely understood that the Class might prefer to hold a traditional “juried” World Championship. In every discussion they reiterated that they were perfectly happy to provide a traditional championship, if that is what the Class preferred..
At the end of a two-month investigation, the feedback the EC received from all external sources was similar – that although on-the-water umpiring does render instant justice, it changes the racing. It does not necessarily make the racing better, but it does make it different.
The presence of Umpires on the water seems to encourage sailors to request more frequent on-the-spot adjudications (more protests) and generally promotes a more aggressive and less collegial brand of sailing. In addition, we heard that for a twenty-boat fleet, monitored by a planned six umpires, the umpiring would be unevenly implemented across the competitors. Finally we heard that on-the-water umpiring rarely works perfectly “out of the box,” the J/70 class officers and umpires we talked to strongly suggested that introducing on-the-water umpiring at our World Championship without it being implemented in one or two prior demonstration events was unwise – they recommended that if the class was moving in the direction of establishing umpired fleet racing as a World Championship standard, that a multi-year program of test events be implemented, to help the class, including the competitors and the race officials work out the best practices for the fleet.
At the conclusion of discussions this week, the matter was put to a vote. The proposal from the Norwegian Organizers to implement Umpired Fleet Racing at the 2024 World Champions was NOT endorsed by the World Class Executive Committee. The 2024 Event will be a traditional World Championship, adjudicated by an International Jury who will hold hearings on shore as needed to support the regatta.
COMMUNICATIONS
At the 2023 AGM, the Executive Committee easily heard the chorus of input
from the Fleets (led by Rick Thompson) that the WCA needed to do a better job
communicating to the Fleets, and do a better job providing the Fleets with
resources that they could use to promote IOD Sailing. At the AGM call, Doug
Witter, John Burnham, and Tom Fremont-Smith raised their hands and said that they
would be interested in working to try to help the IODWCA step up its
communications game. One week after the
AGM, Greg Mancusi-Ungaro called a meeting with Doug, John, and Tom, to try to
figure out what might be attainable. The
sense of that group was that a traditional newsletter was an option, but that a
traditional newsletter would not be the most useful approach. The consensus of
that team was that the class would be better served by putting more emphasis on
extending its existing online channels and developing a presence on underserved
channels. YouTube was targeted as the best first candidate for new channel development.
Within a few days of that conversation the IOD Class launched its own branded YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@InternationalOneDesignFleet -- which is already populated with playlists of regatta videos and videos detailing the class history. Steve Madeira provided fantastic drone footage of the 2023 IOD North American’s and GregMU was able to extract raw video from Sailing World that he edited into two pieces from Marblehead Race Week 2023. The hope is that a YouTube presence will help people who want to show others what is like to sail and race IODs – the YouTube pieces do great job of putting viewed in the middle of the racing. We look forward to adding more videos as the summer sailing season begins…
ST MAWES FLEET STATUS
Sadly, the St Mawes Fleet has ceased operations. The boats at St Mawes have been sold in many
different directions, and at least one of them has been converted to a
motor-cruiser, lost to racing forever.
At the AGM in 2024 there will be a motion to formally remove St. Mawes
from the IOD Fleet roster.
A lesson learned at St Mawes is that although two or three enthusiastic people is a good start, a fleet of only three owners does not quite achieve the critical mass needed to give a fleet long-term sustainability. More discussion is needed to figure out the best way to give developing fleets support, as they must build a strong nucleus of owners and sailors to thrive over the long term. A fleet must be able to cope with the inevitable departure of a team or two and still maintain its vitality and viability.
BUILDER RELATIONS/TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
After almost twenty years of servicing sailors across Sweden, and building
many IODs, Tjörns Yachtservice, owned by IOD legends Lars and Thordis Berntsson,
is for sale. (it is a well-deserved
moment for Lars and Thordis!). The World Class owes an incredible thanks and recognition to Lars and Thordis. Their contribution to the IOD Class is, frankly, among the most important that the Class has even received. Through their direct efforts and generosity, they have revitalized the class in Sweden and Norway. Amazing. Thank you....
The imminent sale of Tjörns has spurred a couple of technical projects. First, Lars and Thordis have compiled his IOD build schedule and process and have generously donated it to the Class. This is a significant amount of IP, there are gigbytes of documents, drawings, specifications, and photographs. Their detailed IOD Cookbook will save a new IOD builder months of trial and error, and will ensure that the next IOD that is built is just as good as the last one built at Tjörns.
Naturally, the specifications that Lars and Thordis provided was in Swedish. For many months the World Class Technical Committee has been busy working with translators to migrate the information into English. Most recently, the TC has been working to find North American equivalents to the European fiberglass cloths and resins specified in the Tjörns documentation. They have made terrific progress, and are getting closer to the finish line of that important project.
When Tjörns is finally sold, the Class will need to move the European Class Molds to a new location, ideally to a new builder. There is a possibility that the European builder program will move to Norway, but there are also some possible Swedish alternatives.
Finally, the Class Molds (one of the chief assets of the class) will require work to prep them for transport, and may require more extensive work to prepare them for use by a new builder. Much more information is needed to figure out those questions and EC Members Hans Johansson, Tormod Lie, and Peter Wickwire (Tech Committee Chair) will be taking the lead in developing a plan (and budget) for next steps.
TRI-SKIPPERS IN IOD QUALIFIERS – REQUEST FROM NANTUCKET
The EC received a request from the Nantucket Fleet for a rules
interpretation/extension of Championship Regulation 5.2 (which describes the
procedures used by Co-skippers who wish to qualify for the World Championship). Frequently at Nantucket (and sometimes at
other Fleets) there are teams where three individuals form a syndicate and
share the helm throughout the summer.
These “tri-skippered teams” do not meet the standards set out in CR 5.2
and therefore cannot represent their Fleets at a World Championship. Obviously this creates a problem for the tri-skippered
teams, and a problem for morale in their respective fleets.
The Nantucket Proposal is a simple one – to explicitly extend the co-skipper provisions to allow for tri-skippered teams. The EC is generally supportive of the Nantucket proposal – it provides the Fleets with a direct solution for a real problem. The EC will work with Nantucket to draft language and provisions that make such a rule extension make sense. It is likely that this CR Rule extension will be refined into a specific proposal for Fleet ratification at the 2024 IOD Annual General Meeting. One aspect of the anticipated 2024 proposal that will be investigated is finding a mechanism that will allow tri-skippered teams to compete in the 2024 Qualifying Season and potentially earn an invitation to the 2025 IOD World Championship.
NEW IOD EVENT – EYC WOMEN’S IOD INVITATIONAL (SEPTEMBER
7/8 2024)
As part of a long-term initiative to broaden community of IOD sailors to include
more younger sailors and more female sailors, the Marblehead Fleet is launching
a new IOD Event this September. The EYC Women’s IOD Invitational will be sailed
on Saturday and Sunday September 7/8 2024, hosted by the Marblehead Fleet and
the Eastern Yacht Club. Information about the event, including the NOR and the
entry application, is available online at www.marbleheadiod.com/womens/
The hosts hope to attract seven to nine all-female teams, including IOD regulars plus top sailors from other fleets and sailing areas. The racing format will resemble that used in the IOD North Americans.
Interested teams are asked to apply for an invitation, completing the application form found at and emailing it, with a sailing resume to the regatta organizers at womens...@marbleheadiod.com. Competitor materials will be evaluated quickly and successful applicants can expect to receive their invitation within a week or so of their application.
| 2024 IOD World Championship Entries | ||
| Defender | DEF | John Burnham |
| Northeast Harbor #1 | NEH1 | Tom Fremont-Smith |
| Sweden #1 | SWE1 | Fredrik Nilsson |
| Fishers Island #1 | FI1 | Wes Maxwell |
| Marblehead #1 | MHD1 | Bill Widnall |
| Nantucket #1 | NTK1 | Roy Weeden |
| Bermuda #1 | BER1 | Patrick Cooper |
| Chester | CHE | Peter Wickwire |
| Norway (Fredrickstad) | NOR-F | Tormod Lie |
| Norway (Tonsberg) | NOR-T | Martin Rygh |
| Long Island Sound | LIS | Elliot Wislar |
| San Francisco | SF | Rich Pearce |
| Northeast Harbor #2 | NEH2 | John Henry |
| Sweden #2 | SWE2 | Ulf Hjalmarsson |
| Fishers Island #2 | FI2 | Jonathan Farrar |
| Marblehead #2 | MHD2 | Marc Migliazzo |
| Nantucket #2 | NTK2 | Peter McCausland |
| Bermuda #2 | BER2 | Kelsey Durham |
| Northeast Harbor #3 | NEH3 | Mia Thompson |
| Sweden #3 | SWE3 | Thord Lyrstrand |