Windsurfing New Zealand AGM
Held at Watercooled Sports Dunedin 6 Feb 2009
Present; Bruce Spedding, Paul Vlietstra, Tony Limburg, Chris Wood, Tim Wood, Jim Rodgers, Chris Dimock, James Dinnis, Dave McPhee, Allan Taylor, Anton Blijlevens, Marilyn Auton, Simon Thomas, Louisa Andrews, Sue Bradley.
Meeting opened at 8:40 by Paul Vlietstra.
Paul explained that the easiest way to get members together was at a national event. We currently have 200 paid up members, 80 of which are life members who will have no future contribution to cash flow.
Annual accounts for last year and interim accounts to 31/12/08 circulated.
Accepted. Bruce Spedding / Sue Bradley.
Election of Officers
President
Bruce Spedding. Nominated by Paul Vlietstra, seconded by Dave Mc Phee. Elected
Secretary
Paul Vlietstra. Nominated by Bruce Spedding, seconded by Jim Rodgers. Elected
Treasurer
Tony Limburg. Nominated by Paul Vlietstra, seconded by Chris Dimock. Elected
Race committee
Essentially to sanction national events, provide templates for organisers and co-ordinate the calendar.
Tim Wood Nominated by Tony Limburg / Seconded by Paul V
Dave McPhee Nominated by TL / Seconded by Paul V
James Dinnis Nominated by TL / Seconded by Dave McPhee
Allan Taylor Nominated by Paul V / Seconded by Dave McPhee
All elected.
Race committee to discuss next slalom nationals with a view to Wellington running them in November 09.
Instruction Committee
Bruce explained the reasons for previous WNZ executive delegating instruction to the RYA in Australia. Not entirely successful and better if we can bring instruction back into NZ.
Sue Bradley keen to get instructors courses back on the NZ calendar.
Sue Bradley Nominated by Bruce S, Seconded by Paul V
Chris Wood, Pete Smith, Tommy Fahey also to be involved .
Women’s representative.
Sue Bradley advised that women needed help to get started in the sport.
She would seek an appropriate candidate for the position.*
General Business
Website
Bruce advised that while the website was in good shape he was having to work very hard to find up to date information for it. Very keen that anyone with info to get it to him, or arrange with him to post it directly.
Consensus that Deep Fried was a really well used site and that we should consider linking in with them.
Bruce said that anything Deep Fried could do we could do.
Dave McPhee and others thought that Windsurfing NZ shouldn’t be involved in a commercial site.
Tim Wood felt that we needed compelling reasons for people to go to our site.
Chris Wood suggested we look at the UKWA site for inspiration
Bruce to arrange regional sections on the site and to contact regional organisations to arrange automatic feeds to the site.*
Sue Bradley suggested that we promote club and local contacts on the site. The easier it is for interested public to access local windsurf schools and clubs the better.
Suggestions for the site included a gallery, sections for each class / discipline, contacts for local bureaucracy and a resource package for areas wanting to set up their own local association.
Paul said that enquiries from the new site were up on past numbers.
Membership
General agreement that we need to aim for 2000 members to give us clout with bureaucracy and to obtain grants.
Various suggestions for getting members signed up.
Shops could sign up new members everytime they bought a board. We could give every windsurfer a year’s free membership and see if we could encourage them to pay after that.
It was also considered that everyone who wanted to compete in any type of event needed to have a WNZ number. This would be paid for but no charge would be made for membership. Organisers of events would be encourage to help with this by insisting that competitors had WNZ recognised numbers. Random sail IDs would be discouraged.
For WNZ sanctioned events this would be mandatory.
Tim Wood asked “why should windsurfers bother to join WNZ”
Bruce Spedding advised that most national organisations had this issue but were essential to provide an umbrella for the sport and its various disciplines and to represent our members with government and local body organisations.
Bruce represents WNZ on the Water Safety Council.
Generally agreed that we need to offer tangible benefits to members and that we could explain our message better.
Jim Rodgers to write an article for Wind + Kite magazine explaining WNZ to possible members. Hope fully this will be published free.*
In the UK members get the Boards magazine for free.Tim suggested that we approach W+Kite owners to buy magazines at a discounted rate to give to our members.
Dave Mc Phee thought that commercially this was unlikely to work for the publisher but that he would approach him on our behalf.*
Maybe the possibility of discounted subs to the mag for members.
CWA has brochure explaining what it does to hand out to prospective members. This could be a good thing for WNZ .
Regional organisations.
Need for an Auckland Windsurfing Association. Anton and others keen to see this happen and confident that it will this year.
CWA has 175 members and WWA something over 200.
Event sanctioning.
Discussion on the upcoming Tom Taylor freestyle event in Wellington.
Would WNZ sanction the event as a national championship at this late stage. James D happy for this to happen but Tom should be co-opted onto the race committee.
Bruce asked about our liabilities if we sanction events. Anton to find out what our liabilities are in these situations.*
Marilyn suggested that WNZ purchase public liability insurance on behalf of event organisers. Allan Taylor said that he had investigated this and that it was somewhat complicated and related to specific sites.
Colgate Sponsorship
Jim Rodgers has been negotiating with Colgate for sometime regarding sponsorship from Colgate. Colgate already sponsor major windsurfing events in Europe and are prepared to spend $10000 a year in NZ.
This would be done through Jim and would perhaps be two to three significant events per year,
Sue Bradley thought a Colgate sponsored kids learn to windsurf programme would be worth pursuing.
Colgate was significant sponsors to the current Slalom nationals and Jim asked that we supply a report and photos for their management.
Paul V promised to do the report and Marilyn to supply photos.*
Local issues
Encourage local organisations to relate to regional councils and harbour masters etc to establish contacts to minimise possible problems.
Bruce suggested noticeboards at local venues promoting safety and contacts. These are working well in many areas.
Meeting closed at 9:30
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