April 24, 2003

Attendees

Kirk Krack, Mandy Cruickshank, Tom Lightfoot. Perry Gladstone joined the meeting via phone. Ken McCallum was away.

Call to Order

This meeting was held at CAFA headquarters in Vancouver. The meeting was called to order at 7:20 pm.

Meeting Minutes

Both the February and March meeting minutes were approved unanimously and will be posted to the website.

Action Items

Kirk:

  • Competition rules – Kirk is still waiting for the AIDA competiton rules to come out.
  • Standards of Safe Diving – Kirk has updated the standards and Tom has posted these to the web site.
  • Safety Protocols – Kirk has produced a revised safety document that outlines the new requirements for lanyards and recovery systems. Kirk will get someone to proof read the document but in the meantime, Tom will put it onto the web site in its current form.
  • Competition Manual – Kirk and Mandy have taken over the task of writing the competition manual from Ken. The document is currently four pages long and in a checklist format.

Tom:

  • French translation of website – Tom has started with the web site infrastructure by sending the text for each of the buttons to Jane for translation.
  • Website help – Tom has been finding it difficult to keep the web site up to date. Tom will approach David Nesbitt about becoming an assistant webmaster.
  • Freediver Survey – Tom has had a friend who has an MBA look at the current version of the survey. She made the following suggestions:
    1. How long have you been freediving in total?
    2. How long has it been since you took your first clinic?
    3. How long has it been since you took your last clinic?
    4. A comment box for general comments.

    All agreed that the questions were relevant and should be added to the survey.

  • 2002 financial report – Tom has the spreadsheet from Mandy but still has not posted the 2001-2002 financials to the website.

Mandy:

  • Financials – Mandy reported that there is $5,921.96 in the bank and that the PayPal transactions are working fine. The financial projections for May and the snapshot were not done.
  • Lung Association Proposal – Mandy produced a proposal for an event called the “Deep Breath Challenge”, modeled on the “Dive for a Cure” campaign. Mandy will find a date in August to run the event and contact the freediving clubs. The following draft documents are also needed:
    • Sponsor proposal
    • Pledge form
    • Press Release
  • CAFA in Quebec – Mandy had a chance to talk to Randy Giles of PADI, who reported that PADI has been completely stymied by the FQAS. PADI has had to resort to using a lawyer to force contact. Randy also stated that Quebec law only applies to SCUBA diving. Mandy will ask Randy which official document states this.

Perry:

  • Perry has a deal with TSN. It would be a 60 minute episode, to be delivered on July 18th, just three weeks after Nationals. This is a pretty tight deadline and Perry reported that there were “lots of hoops”. He estimated that this project had at 40% chance of happening.
  • Sponsorship proposals – Perry reported that Jason has sent packages to several contacts but has had no response. Unfortunately, Jason is too busy to follow up on these contacts.

Ken:

  • Competition manual – Ken is off the project
  • Ken is still to send Tom the vote counts for the 2002 AGM so that he can post them with the minutes.

Nationals

Kirk reported that he has booked the auditorium at the Vancouver Aquarium for Bob Croft’s talk. There is no charge for this facility which seats up to 95 people. Tickets will be $25 each and the profits will be split between CAFA and Bob. Tom will make tickets available for sale on the web site via PayPal. Kirk presented a poster for the talk and after some suggested wording changes, it was approved by the board.

Kirk also reported that the dive boat was reserved and that he was negotiating a price.

Pool Rental Problem

The Canada Games pool in New Westminster has recently banned freediving activities. The Vancouver Aquatic Center has also imposed severe restrictions on freediving activities and is reluctant to allow rentals. Kirk is working the lifeguards at the UBC pool (who are freediver-friendly) to create a video for educating lifeguards and pool administrators about freediving.

Perry also suggested drafting a liability waiver that pools could get freedivers to sign in exchange for allowing freediving practice.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 8:55 pm.