Tuesday, 03 June 2014 10:09

Minutes of 2014 Annual Masters Meeting

Annual Masters Meeting 2014 - Minutes

Wednesday 11th June, 10.00 am

Held at Sopot Sailing Club, Poland

Present
President: Andy Denison
Committee:  Henk de Jager, Rolf Elsaesser, Marc Allain des Beauvais, Fons van Gent
Finn Sailors: approx. 150

 

1.  Opening by the Master’s President
President, Andy Denison, opened the meeting by welcoming everyone. He reported that he has received a letter from the oldest Finn sailor in Poland, Czesław Marchaj sending his greetings to everyone. Ray New (GBR 80) will be taking minutes.

2.  Approval of the minutes of the AMM 2013 La Rochelle (published on FWM Website.)
Minutes of the 2013 meeting in La Rochelle were approved.  There were no matters arising.

3. Masters President report
Andy Denison presented his report to the meeting......
- he had travelled to Sopot and Kavala to view the venues and meet the hosts and all appeared well, reports from these visits are on the website.
- Similar reports will be provided for the 2016 venue
- Andy thanked Fons for his support during his first year as President and presented Fons with a small gift.
- a new Finn Masters bank account has been opened at Lloyds Bank in UK, this is a euro/sterling account
- a new website has been now been set up in UK.  Andy thanked Jan Kingma for his past work on the website and reported that Jan will continue to support the Masters in Poland and as a web assistant in the future
- A new magazine, FinnWorld Masters, was produced in January. Anticipated to be an annual publication.
- Andy encouraged more counties to run their own Finn Masters events and provide reports to the magazine
- Changes to the Finn Masters guidelines/NOR/SIs are under review
- Another perpetual trophy has been purchased, to be called the Presidents Cup.  This will be awarded to the first Master.
- Andy attended the UK Dinghy Show in March and met with the Barbados Tourist Board.  It was here that a plan for Finn World Masters in Barbados was conceived.
- Work on transporting Finns in containers is ongoing, with help from Devoti, and information is available on the website.

4.  Masters Committee  (members standing for re-election)
Fons has served a year as past President and will now retire from the Committee. Philip Baum has been nominated and agreed to be a replacement and joined the Committee. Rolf was due for retirement but has agreed to continue on the Committee.

5.  Financial Report 2013-2014
£12,359 was transferred to the new account at the start of the year. £1900 spent on magazine, £1500 on new website. Income from magazine advertising was £1300
The balance in the account is now £9235 without income from Sopot and IFA. The financial year runs from Annual Masters Meetings. The Accounts were reviewed and signed off by Howard Sellers and Jan Okulicz.
Question: Henry Sprague (USA 74) – why do we need to keep so much capital? AD answered we need to keep a reserve in case of cancellations, host club emergencies etc.

6.  Website / Magazine
New Finn Masters magazine now in circulation, thanks to efforts of Robert Deaves. AD thanked the advertisers and encouraged anyone wishing to advertise in future copies to speak with Robert Deaves.

7.  Country Masters Representatives
A sheet was passed around the meeting for country Masters representatives to sign.  This list will be added to the website for reference.

8.  Legends.  Motion to review Legend discards was dropped

9. The Master’s venues for 2016

Presentations were made by -

Bracciano, Italy

Tihany, Lake Balaton Hungary

Torbole, Lake Garda, Italy

All presentations appear on www.finnworldmaster.com/calendar
There were some questions from
Wouter Molenaar (NED 2)  -  Have locations been visited to ensure all round suitability, including things like parking, camping etc?
Answer – all locations were known by various committee members and known as successful sailing venues.  Visits have not been made but the successful candidate will be visited.

Andreas Bollongino (GER 19)  - Is the Lake Garda venue one club or shared by more than one?
Answer – Torbole is the only club involved and can provide all necessary facilities.

Charles Heimler (USA 2)  -  Can European dates be adjusted to be close to Gold Cup?
Answer – it was felt this would not be possible

Voting for the Master’s venue 2016
The following votes were cast by a show of hands from Finn Masters at the meeting.......

Tihany 14 votes
Bracciano 58 votes
Torbole 75 votes

Torbole, Lake Garda will be the venue for the 2016 Finn Masters

10.  2019 Maubisson, France
Maubisson have indicated they would like to maintain their 10 year cycle and host the event in 2019.  A vote was taken on whether the Finn Masters wants to commit to this at such an early time as this is outside the guidelines for selecting venues.

Votes for committing to 2019 =  21
Votes against committing to 2019  =  the remainder ( > 120)
It was resolved that no commitment would be made at this time.

11.  2017 Barbados
(Presentation on website)
AD stated he had a letter from Barbados Tourism Board supporting the proposal. It was stated by Andy Davies that Finns could be transported from Portsmouth or Le Havre for a guaranteed fixed price of 120 euros.  This is made possible by subsidy support from Geest.
Questions were asked about costs of shipping from USA and Australia, Andy Davies stated that he did not know but would provide that information in a few weeks. The event date would be early June 2017.
A discussion was held about whether to depart from the stated guidelines regarding venue selection (i.e. 2 year maximum).   This was put to a vote........
In favor of departing from guidelines  87 votes
Against departing from guidelines   2 votes
It was agreed that the Barbados proposal should be considered at this time.
A vote for having Barbados as the 2017 venue was then held......
In favor of Barbados in 2017 93
Against Barbados in 2017   4
The 2017 venue will be Barbados.
After this vote it was proposed that we should return, in future, to strict adherence of the 2 year guideline.  This was generally agreed.

12.  Questions  / AOB
There were 2 proposals submitted for discussion/decision....
i. Proposal by Jake Gunther (AUS 3) to increase the annual levy from 10 euros per boat to a higher figure.  Jake made a strong case for this proposal and suggested we vote on various levels of increase.  The vote was held with the following results......

   20 euro levy  54 votes
   30 euro levy  32 votes
   40 euro levy    5 votes

  It was agreed that the levy will be raised to 20 euros for    future events so the entry fee would increase by 10 euros. 

ii. Proposal by Robert Deaves (GBR 10) that the Finn Masters Committee should be empowered to run 3 races in a day (current guidelines state 2 races maximum per day) if necessary, to save an event if races are lost on other days.  There was some discussion and it was clarified that only the Masters Committee should make this decision, not the organizing club or race officer.  There were 84 votes in favor of this proposal so it was carried.

iii. Fons, as a retiring committee member and past president, addressed the meeting stating that he had enjoyed his time on the committee, thanked everyone for their support and stated that the organization was in very good hands with Andy as President.  He received a standing ovation.

13.  Date and place of the next Annual Masters Meeting will be Kavala, Greece on Wednesday 27th May 2015 at 10am.

14.  The meeting closed at 11.20 am. 

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