At last years Annual General Membership meeting, the class decided that
discussion considering the possibility of allowing Nomex/hybrid hulls should be
held outside of our AGM. It was further proposed that I form a technical
committee of three people to consider different construction methods and to
put
forward three molded options to the class. Roger agreed to be part of the
committee as he has some commercial experience building Swifts.
I have attempted to engage a number of Swift builders in this process to get
a measure the level of passion and have had little success. Roger has taken
on a new job and has had little time to communicate.
Because that is not working, I would like to be part of an informal
discussion at Fort Desoto with all of the attending class members to get an
idea of
where we want to go and how we want to get there. This type of discussion will
not work at the AGM. It has been attempted during the past couple of
meetings. It will get postponed or passed on to some âto-be-announcedâ
committee of folks who live 2,000 miles apart. Email technical discussions
require
a very large time commitment. We can likely accomplish in 1 hour of live
discussion what would take months to accomplish via committee email
discussion.
Important conclusions could be passed on to the class for a vote or for
further discussion at next years AGM.
Let me make it clear that I have no interest in going into the boat building
business. From the time I decided to move forward with Swift class
building, my interest has been to give something back to this sport without
spending
too much money along the way. I owe more to high performance sailing than I
will likely ever pay.
On the other hand, I have no desire to see this class flushed down the
toilet like the 49er class in the US. Allowing unproven builders to produce
molded boats commercially at this early stage would do to our class what
Vanguard
did to the 49er class.
A number of ideas have been developed over the years that I'd like to
present (about 15 minutes) on how we can move forward with solving our
manufactured
boat shortage for those who don't have the time to build a Swift. These
ideas revolve around the following objectives:
1. How to protect the interests of the existing Swift member builders to
ensure that their boats, if properly built, would remain competitive at the top
level. This would require some patience as about 7 minutes of technical
findings would need to be presented.
1. How to protect the future of the class by putting in place a method
of control on production quality/ methods/materials until at least 100 molded
Swifts were built. Part of this formula would be to make molded hulls
available to Swift home builders and to ensure that the standard Swift deck
would
mate with the molded hulls. After 100 hulls are built, I would be a
proponent of free enterprise.
1. How to convince a quality builder to participate while protecting
his initial investment.
Please let me know if you are interested in attending such an informal
discussion. I have no interest whatever in doing this during the AGM and I
promise this will be the last time I will ask if there is little interest.
Also, I'm up to my ass in alligators finalizing details in preparation for
the regatta (both personal and class) and do not wish to engage in an email
discussion on this topic other than the agenda and/or topics for the
discussion. Details and questions should be saved for that time. We will keep
good
notes and post them for the class members who were unable to attend.
Remember,
this is not class business and should be viewed as preparation of a possible
proposal to the class.
Itâs been snowing for three days up here. Get me out of here! See you guys
in two weeks.
Bram
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