Minutes of the Open Meeting held in Puck, Poland On August 5^th at 1830hours

Preamble: The original intention of the meeting was for the class to hold its Annual General meeting. This had been advertised and called in a constitutional manner. The following delegated representatives were in the room or had voted by e-mail.

 Dave Sibley’s vote was received immediately prior to the meeting and thus did not comply with Art # 7.6 in the constitution.

There was a brief discussion as to how to proceed. It was agreed by all present that although it was technically impossible to hold the Annual General Meeting, that it was still possible to hold an open meeting of people interested in the development of Junior windsurf racing.

1. Marc Cardon’s Statement (see Appendix 1) 

1.1 Italy will continue with the Aloha class and believe that it is very important because it provides inexpensive and durable equipment for clubs to use to develop new competitors. However, Paulo stated that Italy would consider more modern replacement  equipment as long as it fulfilled their basic requirements of durability and low cost.

1.2 There are over 1000 Alohas in France. The French people present expressed strong opposition to changing to new equipment. It is understood that France will support the MJOD class for international competition only.

1.3 Hong Kong stated that it is important that equipment be available worldwide which is durable and inexpensive and that perhaps the class should consider opening competition to any polyurethane board with a centre board which meets certain measurement requirements and could be raced with a 6.6 sail. This would allow other boards than the existing Aloha to compete and permit countries to buy the least expensive equipment available in their region which complied with the new class rules.

The Chinese are staging a number of regattas for juniors and are currently using the Mistral OD with a 6.6 sail. The Asian market is very important and will become increasingly so in the next quadrennial.

1.4 Poland stated that the policy in Poland is slightly different in that they have a completely different junior training project under way. Young competitors coming out of this programme will go straight onto the MJOD.

1.5 A parent from Italy expressed a concern that there are no longer two ISAF approved World titles in the Aloha class and therefore the girls may miss out and feel that they must race in MJOD as that class does have two world titles. An ISAF “Recognised” class automatically has only one world title and that if ISAF have made an exception in the past, then evidence must exist in writing. 

2. Future Events

2.1 It was pointed out that it will be very difficult to get a decent sized Aloha fleet in Mexico for the 2003 Worlds if charter boards are not available. It is very unlikely that Bic will be prepared to provide these. It was therefore decided that countries such as Italy, France, Great Britain, and Poland should take an additional 5 complete Aloha boards with them which can be used for charter purposes. All the above countries except Poland agreed to provide 5 additional boards.  RR agreed to contact Mexico to find out how many they would be prepared to buy.

2.2 The 2003 Aloha Worlds are scheduled to take place in Nessebar, Bulgaria with racing taking place on the Black Sea. The proposed dates are July 31^st to August 6^th. The Pre-NoR for this will be published in the next 2>3 months.

A presentation was made by the Bulgarian Sailing Federation to a packed room full of people on the following Thursday evening.

2.3 RR confirmed that he was already talking to potential event organisers willing to stage the Worlds and Europeans in 2005 and the worlds in 2006.

3. Any other business.

3.1 Those in the room expressed deep concern that not one single committee member had made him/herself available for the class Annual General Meeting. It was agreed that those coaches and other interested parties involved in the development of junior racing should exchange e-mails and remain in contact.

 3.2 RR stated that the Aloha website was now on the same servers as the IWA website and had been upgraded to include a “breaking news” feature on the front page. The next step is to provide a subscribe button so that class specific mailing lists can be created. All those wishing to have their names on the Aloha mailing list are encouraged to forward their addresses to RR so a start can be made.

 3.3 RR gave a brief update on the proposed ISAF Windsurfing Evaluation Trials.

 Circulation:
Class website
Delegates present
Class Committee

Appendix 1
Good evening and thank you to those that are present in this AGM ALOHA.

I am sorry not to be able to be with you this evening and I kindly request you to excuse me, but my professional obligations prevented me from being present on this Championship all this week and to make travel only for this meeting was an expense which I found excessive for our Class.

I thank Rory to have suggested me to hold this AGM instead of me.

Before beginning I remind you some points of our constitution:

Can vote in this AGM only the Class members who are the Aloha National Classes or the National Authorities managing activity in their country and up to date of their 2003 fees, more the committee members.

National members have to name by writing form their delegates to this AGM.

Delegates or committee members, not able to be present can give in writing form a proxy to and only to another delegate or committee member of the class

Every delegate or member of the committee can have at most 3 votes, his and 2 proxies.

Correspondence or electronic votes are authorized.

The necessary quorum so that this AGM will be valid is minimum is of 8 votes.

The assembly can legally deliberate only on what is registered on the agenda and can vote only on the items that were posted on the site at the latest 14 days before this evening.

Errors of my part except and to my knowledge, nobody has proposed subject or question and nothing was posted on the site before the deadline.

We have to vote this evening for the renewal of half of the committee, but to my knowledge nobody resigned officially and only Didier Flamme let know that he was a candidate for his succession.

In these conditions, I asked me the question of the necessity of holding this AGM this evening. Question which I subjected to the committee which estimated that constitutionally we have to do it and that, it was good, in an other hand, to be in order with the ISAF rules, to hold it.

So, I suggest to you beginning this AGM by following what is planed in the agenda.

Before beginning, we have to see the present or legally represented members present                                    

Represented by Committee            
Marc Cardon                                                                          @mail vote
Didier Flamme
Isy Hutchison
Dave Sibley
Ezio Ferin
Marc Van Rijsselberghe
Ceri Williams
Guy Chilvers

NA Appointed delegated Present                        
Represented by
Bulgaria
France             Marc Cardon                                                              @mail vote
Hong-Kong     Sam Wong                            X
Italy                  Paolo Gione                        X
UK                   

For Rory. I take the elements that I have received by mails. Thank you to complete if some others arrived, be careful to take only the appointing delegates in writing form by their authority and proxies given in writing only to another member or delegated.

We have voting peoples, more than 8, and so, AGM can legally deliberate.

1°) Previous minutes

I hope that you have had and read these minutes and that it is not necessary to read them. They will be annexed to the minutes of this AGM.

Questions? Debate.

Before voting. I have to inform you that as French delegate, I contested several versions of the minutes that circulated further to Largs AGM. Not having received those of this evening, I do not know what they contain.

Furthermore I had contested the validity of the voted decisions because proposals had not been published the deadline imposed by our constitution.

Vote.

2°) Chairman’s report

Ceri Williams was the Class Chairman last year and I was the vice-president. When Ceri was elected as president of the FW Class, he resigned from his presidency of the Aloha Class by proposing to the committee that I replace him in the presidency what the committee and myself accepted. Ceri is not any more the president but he wished to stay member of the committee.

When I write these notes I do not still know the number of Aloha competitors in this championship, nor the represented countries. I hope that the last year’s downward trend is stabilized.

I have not had and did not received inspired idea for the continuation leaving things as they stand or the evolution of the class.

Bic, the Aloha manufacturer commits us to make it as long as we would buy it. Problem it is that this board manufacturing is heavy and expensive to set up and that it are necessary to make at least 300 boards. So it would be necessary to try to group orders and, at the beginning of season.

France was one of the countries which launched Aloha and we have always a strong practice. We have just had our French championship and there were more than 150 competitors on Aloha.

We (French) opened a reflection on the future of Aloha and we have an important meeting on this subject at the end of September. Further to this meeting, I hope that we shall have concrete and interesting proposals to be made.

At this moment, we ignore all that will be the future Olympic board and the future of the long board. So he seems to me difficult even dangerous to change although it is, at the moment. It is our role to reflect in future not to change to change or because it is fashion.

If our French reflection results in something of interesting or if somebody had a brilliant idea, we would naturally inform all the members immediately and if need be and if you wish it, we could hold an extra GM, during a European showboats or by electronic way, for example.

Questions? Debate. Vote.

3°) Financial Statement.

I remind you that the class is an IWA member and that as such it has no more own budget. It is so an extract of the IWA accounts

For Rory. I hope that John is present and that he can present it himself or that he sent you something.

Questions? Debate. Vote.

4 °) Class committee elections

The last elections took place 2 years ago. Statutorily we should reelect this evening half of the committee.

As, I indicated it higher, it does not seem to me judicious to change things at the moment, and furthermore, we did not officially receive resignation and the only candidature of Didier that wishes to continue.

So the committee suggests to you voting to prolong the totality of the current committee for a duration of 2 years. All the remaining committee was so elected for the totality of the 4 years.

Questions? Debate. Vote.

Points 5 not having been the object of any proposition are abolished.

6°) 2004 Event programme

We have a proposal for the next year event in Bulgaria in the beginning of August This event being in Europe, we will not have next year European championships. Rory is going to explain to you

Questions? Debate. Vote.

7°) Any other business

Somebody as he something to add?

Debates, no vote.

The end.

I thank you for your presence and renew you my excuses for my absence.