A New Year message from the President.

Dear fellow sailors,

I wanted to write a message for 2018, reminding the nice moments we had in 2017. Gordon beat me to it with his excellent article "2017 - A Class Year". So I thought, let's take another road and talk about people making the class.

When I started sailing the A-Cat in 2005 - yep, I'm a latecomer - my friend Benjamin told me "you will see, the level is quite high in Switzerland, and much better internationally". And indeed, I ended up my first regatta at the penultimate rank, while having sailed for 30 years before. Well, one has to begin somewhere and insist until something works out. Thanks Benjamin for introducing me to the best sailing class I ever experienced.

You may wonder “what it is like to be IACA president ?” or “what does he do exactly ?”.

Well, there is some work to do, but I enjoy it, particularly because I’m helped by very smart people that look over my shoulder to keep me on track. I should maybe use the metaphor “standing on the shoulders of giants”. Beside the nice teams in the IACA committees, I especially like to meet famous and anonymous sailors all over the boat parks, on the water and later in the bars. Gonzalo and his ideas, Paul the fastest sailor on earth, Ian and his down-under accent, Sandro the engineer, Sergio from Arg, Tymek the coach, Bruno and Luc the perfectionists, Paolo the dentist, the “Youhou brothers”, Jean-Louis the frenchie, Stewie and Glenn the champions, Kostas the greek. And let’s not forget the 900+ other class members across the world. You make the class, not me. Thanks for being part of this adventure !

I wish you and your families all the best for 2018.

Charles

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Charles Bueche
IACA president
iaca@bueche.ch
+41 79 330 00 70