Boatmad.com


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
 
Old 22-02-2012, 11:33 AM   #1
A N Other
 

Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 85
Committee announcement.

OFFSHORE RACING DRIVERS ASSOCIATION

Affiliated to the RYA

Dear All

Following a meeting of the new 2012 committee on Sunday 19th Feb 2012 various matters and issues were discussed relating to the 2011 season, and certain changes have been made to the way the club will from now on operate on a day to day basis.

We all accept that 2011 was a difficult year for the club, particularly when you bear in mind the lack of committee members due to reluctance for people to nominate themselves, and indeed resignations from the committee.

The effect of a lack of committee members in turn created a huge pressure of workload for those remaining, and it is therefore fair to say that we as a club were perhaps not as well organised as we now hope that we will be, now that we have the committee back up to full strength.

We would also like to point out that all the members of the committee give up their own personal time to carry out tasks on behalf of the club, and would ask club members in particular, and also any other person having dealings with the club, to please remember that sometimes we as committee members need to put other personal, and or work commitments first, and would therefore ask for a little understanding, if matters are not being dealt with as promptly, or efficiently as you might otherwise like.

Therefore turning to the positives for the future we would like to explain a few changes that the club has now put in place, which predominantly relate to how the club communicates, with its members and indeed the outside world.

With immediate effect Mark Brewster has now taken over the role of communications, and will from now on be the main point of contact for the club members, or indeed anybody else, that requires any form of question answered by the club. He will on a daily basis be checking e mails to him in this regard, and will respond on behalf of the club, in writing, setting out in detail the clubs position in relation to any question raised by any person.

To that end we are now in the process of setting up specific ORDA e mail addresses for each and every committee member, so that they do not have to use what are normally work e mail addresses, which will make life easier for all the committee members. However this is likely to take a week or two to set up, and we will issue another statement to all parties once the e mail addresses have been set up, and in that statement we will provide the e mail addresses of ALL committee members.

In the meantime, if you could now address ALL correspondence to the club to Marks work e mail address mark@stark-cs.co.uk he will be happy to answer any questions or issues that you might have. Obviously he might need to take the advice of other committee members, and so immediate responses might not always be possible. However we would hope that most queries can be answered within 48 hours, or if not, then an explanation of the process and the likely timescale involved will be given. What we do promise though is that ALL questions will be answered in a considered and reasoned way, and in that way we hope to provide a more positive atmosphere for resolving any issues that any person might have, either with the club, or with something the club is involved in.

This then brings us to the question of public forum websites, and in particular the use of Boatmad.

We have agreed that we do NOT think it is appropriate for issues and debates to be played out on Boatmad, in full view of the public, future potential racers, etc. We have decided therefore that ORDA will not get into any debate on this or any other website on any subject whatsoever. Therefore any questions asked of the club by this medium will from now on unfortunately go unanswered. We are perfectly happy to have the debates on any matter, but we feel they must be through the appropriate channels, and this is as detailed above. Please send your questions to Mark and he will deal with them. Please feel free to debate any matter as much as you like via Mark. All we will not do is have the debate on Boatmad.

The reasons for this are many, but the main one being the perception of the sport by the outside world. If the outside world continually sees arguments, being played out in a public arena, then the likelihood of attracting new blood into the sport is in our opinion somewhat diminished, and to be frank makes us all look like children arguing in a playground. We feel it is of paramount importance, that we ALL promote our sport in a positive manner so that we can attract this new blood in, or else when this current generation of racers retire, (which many are doing already) the sport will be gone.

That said we do recognise the good sides of Boatmad as well. It is a fantastic medium to get information out from the club to anybody we want to reach, and we will continue to use Boatmad in this positive way. We will continue to use the ORDA sub thread as an area where we can issue any information that will be of assistance to members, racers and the public, such as advance notices of events, race instructions, race results, general statements etc. All we will not be doing is getting into argument and debate on the website for the reasons outlined above.

Turning now to race teams in particular, we would hope that you all see this as a positive step forward in the way that racing issues can be dealt with by the club. Mark has been racing for 12 years now, both as driver and as navigator. He has raced 2 litre and V24, his son Sam last year raced OCR and 1.3 litre and both of them will be racing again this year. He is possibly therefore better placed than most to understand any issue, from the race team’s perspective, and guarantees you, that his main aim in this role is to create an atmosphere where we have a positive environment that provides fair and fun racing for ALL race teams no matter, at what level, or within what class they race. He gives you his personal assurance that he will deal with any issue raised in an unbiased manner, and that he will do everything he possibly can to keep the racers as happy as possible within the confines of the rules that exist.

To that end Mark will be writing to various race teams over the next day or two, which we know to have outstanding queries or issue with the club, in an effort to clear up such issues and clear the way forward for a successful 2012 season.

Mark awaits any queries or questions that you may have at the above e mail address.

The Committee.
__________________

ORDA is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 22-02-2012, 02:00 PM   #2
BananaShark Member
 
Cookee's Avatar
 
Country: UK
Location: Salcombe South Devon
Occupation: Racer and builder
Interests: Winning races
Boat name: BananaShark
Boat make: BananaShark 34' Race
Engines: Twin Yanmar BY 260's

Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Salcombe South Devon
Posts: 4,638
In the interests of transparency I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering who the committee consists of and who is writing the above on behalf of the committee?

Good luck for the future and may ORDA succeed and prosper!
__________________

__________________
Cookee



British Champions! RIB Formula 1 2005
National Speed Record Holder at 90.15 (still)

www.bananasharkracing.com
Cookee is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 29-02-2012, 11:00 AM   #3
A N Other
 

Join Date: Jan 2012
Posts: 85
Whilst not wanting to immediately break the rules we have set within ORDA, where we have decided not to get into debate, on this or any other public forum website, on any subject whatsoever, the previous post by Cookee has brought to our attention that there should possibly have been more information within our previous statement about the set up and structure of the 2012 ORDA committee.

At our recent AGM, Cliff Smith, Shirley Simpkins and Mark Brewster all offered themselves up for re election and the members attending the AGM voted in favour of this proposal.

There were also 4 new people that offered themselves up to be committee members, these being Muriel Irwin, Nick Boffee, Neil Jackson and Dave Ormiston, again the members attending voted in favour of these proposals.

The committee therefore now consists of 7 people, and at our first committee meeting on the 19th February 2012 it was decided that now that due to the fact that the committee was finally back up to full strength, that we are now able to much more clearly define the roles and responsibilities within that committee.

For clarification the roles are as follows..........

Cliff Smith – Chairman, will carry out the normal duties as required of the Chairman, but in particular will be responsible for logistics, and general organisation of race boats, trailers, campers / motorhomes etc at the events.

Shirley Simpkins – Secretary / Treasurer, will carry out normal duties as required of the Secretary / Treasurer, and will continue to organise the individual events and issue race instructions etc.

Mark Brewster – Will now be responsible for Club communications with any party that requires information / has questions of / or who has any general query with the Club. This is so that all communications from now are dealt with in a considered manner, and that they represent accurately the views of the Club and that perhaps more importantly do the best to promote the sport in the best possible light for the good of us all.

Muriel Irwin – Membership Secretary will be responsible for members newsletters membership applications and general promotion of the club to encourage new members.

Nick Boffee - Club Bosun, who is now responsible for looking after and maintaining all the club equipment, the trailer, and for getting it to and from events.

Neil Jackson – Drivers representative, who will be responsible for making race crews views and feelings known to the committee whenever it is necessary, and will also help Nick Boffee with the trailer and equipment.

Dave Ormiston – Event promotion, Dave will be responsible for all media such as posters etc, and for working with the venues to actively promote the event.

The second part of Cookee's post was about who is writing on behalf of the ORDA committee.

The posts made by ORDA, with the ORDA logo avatar should be seen as posts made by the committee as a whole and should be seen as official statements by the Club. Any other posts by any other individual are NOT official ORDA posts and should not be viewed in the same way.

That said, just to be transparent, it is likely that most of the posts will be written by Mark Brewster in line with his committee role above, and that we will copy and paste them into a Boatmad thread, if and when it is decided appropriate to do so.

We would again like to reiterate that this is all in an effort to promote the sport in the best light possible, and we as a committee would now urge ALL powerboat race teams to use the correct channels of communication with the Club, as we have previously laid out, and lets put an end to all this bickering.


Mark Brewster

On behalf of the ORDA committee.
ORDA is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-03-2012, 08:42 AM   #4
BananaShark Member
 
Cookee's Avatar
 
Country: UK
Location: Salcombe South Devon
Occupation: Racer and builder
Interests: Winning races
Boat name: BananaShark
Boat make: BananaShark 34' Race
Engines: Twin Yanmar BY 260's

Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Salcombe South Devon
Posts: 4,638
Thanks Mark - just what I was asking!
__________________
Cookee



British Champions! RIB Formula 1 2005
National Speed Record Holder at 90.15 (still)

www.bananasharkracing.com
Cookee is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


Powered by vBadvanced CMPS v3.2.3

All times are GMT +1. The time now is 02:16 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
×