Proposals for Consideration Bakio 2007

Worlds Meeting Votes Bakio 2007

Worlds Meeting Bakio 24th October 2007

World’s Meeting Monday 24 th October 2005 Jaco Beach, Costa Rica

In Attendance:

Andrew Hawker England
Mark Pastick USA East
Anthony Bell USA East
Jason Serouhan USA West
Kim Sprague USA West
Morlee Griswold USA West
Dennis Judson USA West
Jameson Riser USA
Devon Barker USA
Jamie Cooper USA West
Wayne Waddington USA West
John Bonaventure USA West
Chris Harvey Guernsey
Jared Licht USA West
Rusty Sage USA West
Jono Stevens USA West
Demany Smith USA West
Kate Smith USA West
Eric Sadler USA West
John Watson England
Phil Watson England
Darren Bason England
Gary Adcock England
James Hawker England
Ailsa McDougall Jersey
Rhiannon Woodman Wales
Gina Troiani USA West
Dave Johnson USA West
Txabi Caballero Basque Country
Tito Fernandez Basque Country
Luis Abando Basque Country
Toca Gonzales Costa Rica
Neil Baxter Scotland
Dan Crandall USA West
Joey Hall USA East
Rick Starr USA West
Peter Blenkinsop England
Stuart McGlinchey Jersey
Vince Shay USA

Introduction by Rick Starr ( Chairman )

Re-iterated goals of WSKA
Asked for suggestions for new ideas

Rusty Sage suggested holding a World Cup in the alternate years. This would possibly comprise of 4 events in one year. It would be an individual competition only.

Toca pointed out possible problems in organisation, but there was plenty of interest.

Neil Baxter welcomed interest in attending Thurso for Scottish champs in 2006. This event could be combined with a World Cup final.

Web site

Vince Shay offered help. It was suggested to send out an automated e-mail list once a month. Countries were to be asked to send a list of e-mail contacts to Andrew Hawker .

Contest 2007

This was to be held in the Bakio/Mundaka area in the autumn of 2007. Final dates to be decided. There could be 2 or 3 days at Mundaka. The main difficulty was that it only works on 4 hours of the tide. Mark Pastick proposed the motion for next worlds to be in Mundaka in 2007 which was carried.

Boat categories or design

Joey Hall put forward the Committee’s proposal to rename the Open class as the Short kayak class limited to length under 9 feet (2.74m). This was discussed at length. This produced five different proposals for change.

Proposal 1

As committee proposal up to 9 feet

Proposal 2

Short and long unlimited 9 feet

Proposal 3

Hot dog division for short boats under 9 feet

Proposal 4

One open division

Proposal 5

• open division anything goes
• short boats under 9 feet

Eventually it was decided that each team would discuss this, and then make a team decision. Then there would be a vote using one representative from each team.

The team representatives subsequently voted in favour of proposal 1.

Judging

 This was discussed fully and three proposals were brought forward.

Proposal 1

To judge the open and IC classes differently.

Proposal 2

Change from long board to short board rules

Proposal 3

Keep current system

Again this was voted on after discussions at team level, and the decision of the team representatives was for proposal 1; to judge the long and short kayak classes differently.

2009 World Championships

Rick asked for suggestions. Later in the week the Argentinian team put forward an idea to hold the event at Mar del Plata .

Other Rules

Committee will work to make safety rules clearer. It was suggested that we remove the rule about requiring tails on the kayaks. Vince Shay asked about the WSKA view regarding use of impact vests instead of PFDs. He asked if the WSKA committee might make an authoritive statement regarding suitability, since at the current time the ACA requires PFDs to be worn for insurance purposes.

World Kayak Surf Association
2003 Worlds Meeting, Easky, Ireland

Election of Worlds Committee:
Chair: Rick Starr (will accept a probationary 6 month role)
Neil Baxter
Joey Hall
Stuart McGlinchy (with the provision of Rick Starr as chair)
Pete Blenkinsop
Andrew Hawker (To investigate Internet site hosting)

Committee Role:
Committee to ensure that they are more proactive this time round. The committee accepts their shortcoming in the last two years. Rick pointed out that he would take the Chair position with the reservation that the committee needs to be more proactive this time round.
The committee will work to ensure that there is a single direction, rule set and format for competitions and events.
The committee will also investigate the possibility of seeking ICF accreditation and find out what this would mean to the current direction and ethos of the sport.

WKSA Entry fees:
Each competitor at the 2003 World Kayak Surf Championships contributed €10.00 to the World Kayak Surf Association (WKSA). This contribution will now be used to fund a WKSA web site.
The WKSA site will be possibly be hosted by the BCU (A Hawker to investigate). The Irish Canoe Union Surf Committee also offered use of their site if required.
Dan Crandall has a contact that could possible maintain the web site and Joey Hall may also be involved in this.

Next Worlds:
There were a number of possibilities offered for the next World Championships to be run 2005.

Costa Rica was offered as the most likely host of the competition. However the CRC team felt that they did not have the resources to run the event within their own Association. They would need assistance from the WKSA to run the event. CRC simply do not have the numbers to run a competition on the scale of the Santa Cruz or Irish events.

World Championships Format:
There was considerable discussion on the format of the next World Championships. Coming from this there were 7 options given:
1. Reduce the team size
2. Run an individual event and use this to pull together team scores to decide who moves into a team final
3. Reduce heat times
4. Reduce individual event time by limiting participation to two categories
5. Run the team event in two rounds and not 3
6. Increase the overall time of the event
7. Do not change the event time

Agreement was made that the options could be narrowed down to 3 concepts. It was decided that we should vote on these and decide later on the detail.
These 3 concepts were:
1. Change to an individual event format with only a team final, finalists decided on individual performances
2. Tweak the current format, team size, more time to team event, less to individual etc.
3. Leave the format unchanged

Option 1 had a tie, option 2 was defeated and option 3 passed.
It was then decided the concept was more basic and that a vote should be narrowed to:
1. Change to an Individual style event
2. No Change
3.
No change was decided upon by a majority vote.

Boat Lengths and Design:
Again a discussion on the merits of maintaining two classes took some time. It was also suggested that there should be a larger HP event with the size of the IC event being drastically reduced.
Again it was agreed that the vote should first be conducted on a Change v No Change basis.

No change was decided upon by a majority vote.

Age Categories:
The question of age categories was also called upon for a vote. Two votes were taken firstly on the junior cut off and secondly on the masters cut off.

Junior cut off to be changed from 18:
1. Change
2. No Change

No change was decided upon by a majority vote.

Masters cut off to be changed from 40:
3. Change
4. No Change

No change was decided upon by a majority vote.

Judging:
The last order of business was the question of judging (encompassing the rule sets). After some discussion it was decided that a 3-way vote was needed with the following options:

1. Use long board judging
2. Use short board judging
3. Use two styles of judging, both long board and short board

However the vote was then modified to be:
1. Use 1 style of judging
2. Use 2 styles of judging – class specific
Using 1 style was decided upon by a majority vote. The committee are now tasked with defining this style of judging, this to include legal/scoring maneuvers for both classes.

Action Points:

1. Decide on 2005 World Championships
Committee, Alejo Pacheco and Dan Crandall
January 2004

2. Define Judging Rules
Committee

3. Investigate Web Site Host
Andrew Hawker

4. Investigate Web Site Maintainer
Andrew Hawker, Dan Crandall and Joey Hall

5. Investigate the logistics of ICF Accreditation
Committee