politics

Yesterday Carla’s day started with a breakfast meeting with the European vice president of IODA Johanmi from Finland wanting to discuss the late entry charges as several countries were asked for these at this event and the possibility of getting the Worlds back to Europe.  The decision on where 2013 worlds will be is decided at the AGM  in New Zealand in December. All countries have a vote and the European countries make up the biggest group however because of the costs of getting there, lots of European nations are not going, France and Greece and many of the smaller nations Monaco, Malta, San Marino, the Baltic states and old eastern block countries such as Czech republic  etc are all not going so will not be there to vote. Vagelis , the Greek coach  told me that one of his parents had worked out it would cost 5000 Euros to just get the parent  and his sailor to New Zealand before including  the costs of sending the coach.

The issue is how to get the votes of those not attending to the meeting and to be sure that not more than one European country  bids for the worlds as that could split the vote and we could be all having to find yet more money to go to South America or Asia again. None of those countries will be easily persuaded to vote for Europe because for them it is  expensive in flights and living costs, the  same issue as for us going to them.  Many countries have raised the issue of the costs of going to NZ with IODA but the answer is the countries voted for it.

Some European countries are finding the entry fees for this event high as traditionally all the sailors stay together in one hotel and such hotels are more  expensive.  It also hard for the event organizers to find sponsors to help with the running costs of the event and the organizers are dependant on their club volunteers to do all the event management. Its not the number of sailors which is an issue because 230 is quite small by our standards its all the complexities of providing lunch , transport full measurement, international PRO , juries etc and dealing with all the different nationalities.

There is nothing like being here to remind you that we live on a small damp grey island off northern Europe and drink bad coffee ( apologies to  Tarek, Mimi’s dad who is a coffee trader and trying to change that ) and only speak English and some poor French .