ISAF Annual Meeting 2012 - Key event for Australia

by The Sail-World.com Team on 5 Nov 2012 While most of world news attention is riveted to this week’s American Presidential election, the international sailing community has a presidential election of our own on November 10th, namely that of the office of ISAF President and this election is of special interest to the Australian sailing community.

Current ISAF President Goran Petersson is set to step down from his eight-year stint in November, and a field of three candidates -Australia’s own David Kellet and Carlo Croce (ITA), Eric Tulla (PUR) and are running for the top job.

Today Kellet, who we Aussies all know is a bloody straight shooter talks about his vision for the position, his style of leadership and 'nails his colours to the mast', directly addressing perceived criticisms of his candidacy.

'In earlier correspondence with you, I have given you a background of myself and my passion for the sport of sailing,' wrote Kellet in an open letter to all national sailing authorities. 'I am a practical, hands-on leader who is very approachable [and] with no hidden agenda. As you can probably gather from my emails and letters, I prepare everything myself and openly express how I feel about matters, no professional presentation, just an honest straightforward approach.'

Kellet, it should be noted, is a veteran racing sailor with 38 Sydney-Hobarts (and counting), as well as Fastnet and Newport-Bermuda experience, to his credit and has served two four-year stints as ISAF VP, as well as a four-year term as ISAF Treasurer.

Check out the multi-media reports, inside this issue, to learn more about the ISAF Assembly and election, which will be held this coming weekend in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland.

It’s make or break time for the windsurfers trying to get the ISAF kiteboarding for Brazil 2016 overturned. Be sure to check out Richard Gladwell’s interesting piece on past Olympic medallists’ thoughts on kiteboarding versus windsurfing for the 2016 Games.

Given that the crucial vote for 2016 Olympic Equipment is about to happen, proponents of both sailing disciplines have been making strong arguments as to why their side should prevail, but Gladwell’s piece, which is essentially a collection of quotes from Olympic greats, offers a far deeper look into the realities of changing from 'planks' to kites.
Back to Australia we are very pleased to report on the very successful launch of Performance Sailcraft Australia (PSA)’s new F18 Capricorn. The F18 scene is significant in Europe especially so we will follow the progress of this new design with interest .

The Rolex Sailor of the Year award, to be announced in Dublin has special interest for Australia with Mathew Belcher, Malcolm Page, Nathan Outteridge, Iain Jensen and Tom Slingsby have all traveled to Dublin with the announcement to take place at a dinner on Tuesday evening.

The three gold medal winning crews are all in the running for the prestigious award, with 2012 being the first time that Australia has had three finalists.

Australia’s 470 men’s, 49er and Laser crews will face tough opposition for the award with Great Britain’s four-time Olympic gold medallist Ben Ainslie and French round-the-world sailor Loick Peyron also finalists.

And in America’s Cup news, Artemis Racing, the Challenger of Record for the 34th AC, has officially launched their first AC72 class wing sail-powered catamaran, despite some initial 'birthing pains'.

Also AC related, Luna Rossa launched their AC72 last week in Auckland, and have already started their sailing program, no doubt in an effort to log precious training time and to try to close the massive experience gap between themselves and Emirates Team New Zealand. Inside, check out ace shooter Carlo Borlenghi’s great image gallery of the team’s silvery cat’s first sail, get Richard Gladwell’s report on the team’s first foiling experience.