2016 IOMICA Motions

[Hiljoball]

Shortly your National organization should ask you to vote on these motions, and based on that majority, your country will vote Yes or No on the proposals. So it is important for you to vote when you receive your ballot.

There are two motions being presented at the 2016 IOMICA AGM. Here is a link to the agenda.

http://www.iomclass.org/wp-content/uplo ... 282016.pdf

But to find the details, you have to click on the links embedded in the agenda. The proposed change to the IOM class rule is significant so make sure that you look through it.

Here is a direct link to the proposed changes

http://www.iomclass.org/doc-files/Admin ... _AGM-1.pdf

This post concentrates on the proposed changes to the IOM Class rules. In my opinion, we should vote against the Rule change proposal as it represents a power grab by the IRSA to take more control over the IOM class that currently exists. While some parts of the proposed changes may be fine, other parts are not. But is appears to be an omnibus motion – take it or leave it in total.

What is bad about this motion? The intent seems to be to bring the IOM class rule closer to the new (and widely unpopular) rules promulgated by the IRSA for the other three International Classes which currently lack their own International Class Associations. While our rules share a common format to the other three classes, there is a big difference – the IOM class is a closed rule (everything is banned unless permitted), while the other three are open rules (everything is allowed unless banned).
So several changes should not be accepted,

A.79 CLASS RULES INTERPRETATIONS
A.79.1 GENERAL
Interpretation of class rules, except as provided by A.9.2, shall be made in accordance with the IOM ICA IRSA Regulations

This one is a power grab by the IRSA by adding the IRSA letters to the process. To date we have been well served by the interpretations of the IOMICA Technical Committee. Unfortunately the last technical ruling request about the plate/vang system was referred to the IRSA and the result was that we were given a dimension factor that made a number of existing commercial vang fittings non-compliant. As the ruling was generated by a committee including an owner of Sails Etc, one could see possible conflict of interest.

A.1012 VALIDITY OF CERTIFICATE
A.10.1 A valid certificate is issued using the IRSA approved certification documentation in accordance with the procedures in A.9 and A.12. Certificates from other documentation or sources are invalid.

Another power grab – today we use the IOMICA documentation and it has met our needs for many years. IRSA approved certification for the other classes is far more complex than required for IOMs.

A.10.12.12 A certificate becomes invalid upon:
(a) aA change of ownership,
(b) wWithdrawal by the certification authority.,
c) The issue of another certificate.

This is shown as a strike out change (I have underscored it here as there is no strikeout function) is proposed by IRSA to allow multiple certificates in the other classes (against the wish of many owners as it allows for multiple copnfigurations eg light or heavy wind venues, and increases the cost of competing by requiring more rigs). Now IRSA is trying to put it in the IOM class where it is a valid line item – ie only one valid certificate is allowed..

A.13 RETENTION OF CERTIFICATION DOCUMENTATION
A.13.1 The certification authority shall:
(a) retain the original documentation upon which the current certificate is based,
(b) upon request, transfer this documentation to the new certification authority if the hull is exported

This is overkill for IOMs. The current IOMICA regs meet our needs.

The proposal also seeks to change the way we archive prior year rule interpretations. Currently they are available on the IOMICA Class Rules page. I see this as a valuable resource as it easily answers questions that keep coming up form new skippers. The proposal is to take these interpretations and move them to a Q&A section on the IRSA web site. This is quite unnecessary as we are capable of looking after our own archives on our own web site.

John

[Hiljoball]

The second proposal seeks to change the International Regulations for World and Continental Championships. The proposal is to remove the concentration on HMS as the regatta heat management and scoring system.

What this is really about is another attempt to bring in the SHRS heat management system. Last IOMICA AGM we voted against a motion to implement SHRS to replace HSM. That was a poorly worded motion as it sought to take away HMS and replace it with SHRS. At that time SHRS was more of a concept and lacked an easily usable scoring system. Over the past year, a clever team in New Zealand has written a scoring system to make SHRS viable.

However SHRS is still largely unproven. It has been used in a couple of countries for their local and national events. That does not make it ready for use at a World Championship, where skippers invest many thousand dollars to attend. One problem is that SHRS processes are not yet clearly defined. SHRS is conceived as a two part regatta - part A is a round robin set of fleet races. Part B freezes the fleets into Gold, Silver, Bronze etc and for the latter part of the regatta, you only race in your fleet - no advancement to a higher fleet is possible. When does the split occur? - which fleets continue to race or pack up and go home?

I said this a year ago,and I say it again, the proponents of SHRS should take it to the IRSA and seek to have it endorsed as an Approved System, like HMS. To gain this approvel the IRSA can ensure that the SHRS procedures are complete, understood and thoroughly tested. Then an organizing authority hosting a World or Continental Championship may choose between approved systems.

John

[Miguel Salvador]

Hi John,

As it says in the CCR:
6.2. The Organising Authority shall appoint a Race Officer and Race Committee (RC) for the Championship. The RC shall be responsible for the conduct of the championship under the direction of the IOM ICA Events Sub-Committee (ESC) and shall be empowered to select and replace all other officials as may be required.

If the SHRS or any other alternative system is not yet understood and tested it will be an IOMICA ESC decision to run the event with it or not.

There are some things that I don't like either in the HMS and SHRS. I don't want to be back with the endless discussion about HMS vs SHRS. But I think it's time to try and test locally in our countries.

In my opinion is a good opportunity to be open and have another system in the CCR and choose one for an event.

Best regards,

Miguel Salvador
ESP-15

[Barry Fox CAN262]

The proposed change to the CCR doesn't make SHRS a fixed possibility for the Worlds or Continental Championship. It actually opens the possibility of using any other scoring system, with the approval, as Miguel properly states, of the Events ESC. The way the rules currently read there are hints that HMS is the only system the ICA will allow.

The wording actually helps clean up the hints and makes it a possibility to use an alternate system, whatever it might be.

Personally, I see this as a housekeeping kind of a change and then as other possible systems are proved it woudl be possible to implement them without having to constantly be making "hardwired" rule changes.

This rule change should proceed. My opinion.

[Hiljoball]

Results are here - Both motions passed.

http://www.iomclass.org/blog/2017/02/05 ... g-results/

John