MYA Council News, January 2024

It was great to see officers and representatives from around the country at the January Council meeting in Birmingham, and although traditionally quieter on the water this meeting is always busy with items that are raised at the AGM and plans for the coming year.

The meeting was chaired by the Vice Chair, and the topics on the agenda were as usual diverse and full of passion. These ranged from the success of the 2023 AGM and Trade show, through to amendments to the 6M class rules to allow older boats to be made competitive in the fleet and much in between.

There were a couple of items that may be of interest to the members; firstly, we are going to create a new award within the MYA National Championship events, this will be MYA Veteran National Champion. This will replace the current Veteran Championships that are held for the classes, the winner’s name will be added to the existing trophy. This has been discussed previously, along with the qualifying age, with the view at that time being that separate events were still popular, however over recent years the number of competitors has fallen at these events and finding time in the calendar more and more difficult. It has also been seen that in most classes the skippers attend both the MYA Nationals and Veterans. It was therefore proposed and agreed that the Veteran Championships would now be incorporated within the class MYA National Championships. It was further agreed that the qualifying age would be increased to 70 years young. It was felt that this more reflects the current age of our skippers.

At the other end of the spectrum, we are to redesignate the winner of the Vulturesoft Trophy at the IOM Nationals. This will now become an award for the highest placed skipper who is competing in their first MYA, IOM National Championship. This is intended to recognise and welcome the newcomers to the fleet who are starting what we hope will be a long interest in competing at the higher levels.

It was agreed that in 2024 the AGM would follow a similar format, and we would offer the chance for members to take part in a boat jumble during the trade show. Tony Guerrier had a most impressive offering at the 2023 show and had worked with his club to bring along a range of items that he and club members were happy to pass back into the sport. It’s amazing what club members collect over the years, and most of it was snapped up during the morning. We will again for 2024, be inviting two speakers to attend and give a short talk on their specialist area. The contents of this will be confirmed later, but if you have any requests for speakers, or areas of interest please contact Jen our secretary to council here as this will be a help to us when the time comes. The venue has yet to be decided but we wish to make it as accessible to the members as possible.

One of the first items on the agenda was finding a new Chair for the MYA, this is an ongoing task, but we decided that even without a Chair we should set out a plan for 2024; the hope being that this will encourage volunteers to step forward for several roles, once they know what we are trying to achieve and extend to further years.
Each council member was asked to make a short list of items they considered important. Predictably this gave a large spread of thoughts, but probably to no one’s great surprise most involved some kind of improvement in communication, followed closely by skills development for all levels.

Over the coming weeks the council will work on how we can incorporate these into our 2024 workings.
If you wish to read the minutes and the relevant reports, please visit the MYA members’ area on the website and click on Council Meetings and AGM Docs. MYA Members Area – Model Yachting Association Great Britain (mya-uk.org.uk)

Finally, if you have any questions about this or any other elements of the MYA please make contact and we will try to answer your questions.

Take Care and See you at the Lakeside.
Darin
Vice Chair