Boycott US Sailing's sponsors for this bull

[Skull & Bones]

I could'nt imagnine it either, however I've already bought a boat, slip fees, club dues, insurance, regatta entry fees, new sails, sandwichs for the crew, beer, drinks @ the bar later, etc.....

I pay for my own boat, sailing and crew. Isn't that enough?

btw, U.S. Sailing gets lots of money from clubs & other sources too.

WW makes a good point here. The sport is expensive enough. Requiring crew to be registered to race is idiocy....It's hard enough to get good crew without that stupidity in the way.

Your right...it is enough. They must really want to kill the sport to legislate away the very people you need to keep the sport viable..youth.

[Stuart Streuli]

"I could'nt imagnine it either, however I've already bought a boat, slip fees, club dues, insurance, regatta entry fees, new sails, sandwichs for the crew, beer, drinks @ the bar later, etc.....

I pay for my own boat, sailing and crew. Isn't that enough?"

It is enough. The question is why your crew should get off without paying anything? For years the model within the sailing industry has had the skipper paying for everything, the crew nothing. Hey, I love to sail on boats with generous owners. But when it comes to supporting the sport, the infrastructure that we need, we all should chip it. Get your crew to sign up for US Sailing. If you're buying the beer it's the least they can do. At the worst you'll be getting more for your buck from US Sailing. At best your dues might actually go down.

[MFLO]

Does the proposed rule require all crew to be members of US Sailing, too? I thought it was skippers only?

I agree that asking crew to join US Sailing is a small price to pay for an otherwise free sport, but on the other hand it's probably a stretch to expect every crew racing on every boat to be a US Sailing member. How would the Captain Rons of the world find a crew spot?

[davereed]

I've already made my case for paying my membership dues, and trust me, I've discussed this to death with many others. There are more reasons to support this effort than to withhold. There seem to be a lot of misperceptions out there as well (probably due to the fact that the actual wording of the prescription is finished). WW...this will apply to owners/helmsmen at major regattas (national championships, etc...) so you're crew is not required under the proposed prescription (but IMHO they should be members anyway). I had a constructive exchange yesterday with a reader from Oregon (who CC'd Jim Capron), and for what it's worth, this is what Jim had to say:

There are very few sports, either in the USA or abroad, that do not require membership at the national level. Unfortunately, voluntary membership does not work as most of our sister organizations have known for a long time. For the record, here are a some of the things we have done support and grow the sport over the last two years.

In 2007, US SAILING . . .
Trained 1300 Sailing Instructors
Issued 1700 Offshore Rating Certificates
Staged 18 National Championships
Hosted its 4th annual One Design Sailing Symposium
Safety at Sea volunteers taught 1000+ Sailors at SAS Seminars
For the 11th year in a row, ran 22 Junior Olympics for 4000 kids

So far, in the first 100 days this year (through April 10, 2008) . . .
Hosted its 25th annual National Sailing Programs Symposium.
Has already scheduled over 120 (Level 1, Level 2, Keelboat, Cruising) instructor training courses around the country.
Scheduled 21 Junior Olympics events.
Introduced Sailorships, which provides $50,000 per year in grants for kids to travel and enter youth events.
Through the US SAILING Foundation, granted $32,000 to one design sailors.
Began the development of a new Youth Big Boat Program to teach junior sailors the teamwork to race offshore boats. For this new YBBP, we obtained a nationwide waiver of US Coast Guard licensing requirements for the coach and skipper.
Staged 23 Race Officials seminars, and certified more than 40 new US SAILING race officials
Held nine Safety at Sea Seminars, training over 1700 sailors for offshore racing and cruising. Three of the nine SAS seminars were ISAF level SAS Seminars, providing hands-on life raft and firefighting drills to qualify sailors to compete in the Fastnet, Sydney to Hobart and the Middle Sea races.
Represented the interests of sailors at four government meetings and hearings on safe boating, overboard discharge, increasing PFD usage and homeland security measures for pleasure boats.

So I think US SAILING adds a lot of value to the sport. Please let me know how we can expand on that list.

Jim Capron

[Skull & Bones]

"I could'nt imagnine it either, however I've already bought a boat, slip fees, club dues, insurance, regatta entry fees, new sails, sandwichs for the crew, beer, drinks @ the bar later, etc.....

I pay for my own boat, sailing and crew. Isn't that enough?"

It is enough. The question is why your crew should get off without paying anything? For years the model within the sailing industry has had the skipper paying for everything, the crew nothing. Hey, I love to sail on boats with generous owners. But when it comes to supporting the sport, the infrastructure that we need, we all should chip it. Get your crew to sign up for US Sailing. If you're buying the beer it's the least they can do. At the worst you'll be getting more for your buck from US Sailing. At best your dues might actually go down.

"Son, you need to support US Sailing so some dipshit can sit in an office and tell us what to do"