April 2, 2002

Attendance

Kirk Krack, Mandy Cruickshank, Ken McCallum, Tom Lightfoot

Call to Order

This meeting was held at CAFA Headquarters, 106 – 3533 West 4th Avenue in Vancouver. The meeting was called to order at 6:45 pm.

Meeting Minutes

Kirk reviewed the minutes from the February executive meeting.

Education Program

No new progress has been made in developing the CAFA Education Program since the last meeting. However, some members in Ontario have been inquiring about the program and want to instruct freediving locally.

Bumper Stickers

The stickers have not yet been ordered. The delay was due to not having the logo artwork in an Encapuslated Postscript (EPS) format. Mandy now has the EPS file and will order the stickers.

Insurance

Johnston Meier Insurance has informed Kirk that there are two companies interested in providing insurance to CAFA. These companies are Sports Can and Elliot General Liability. CAFA’s original application had been to Sports Can. Kirk will update the Sports Can application and fill out the Elliot application in order to obtain quotations.

Provincial Underwater Council Memberships

Ken has attempted to contact several provincial underwater councils without a satisfactory result.

Province Means Result
Ontario email No reply
Nova Scotia email Returned
Yukon email Returned
Alberta phone No reply
Saskatchewan mail No reply

 

So far it seems that BC has the best organized underwater council. Ken will keep trying.

CAFA Affiliated Clubs

Tom has not yet posted the proposed club requirements to the Freedive Vancouver list. He will make the posting this week. The board intends to enact the proposed requirements in May.

Freediver Magazine to CAFA Members?

Last meeting’s proposal to send Freediver magazine’s to members was dropped so that CAFA can save money for insurance.

Standards of Safe Diving Practices

Mandy has drawn up a Standard of Safe Freediving Practices that was based on PADI’s standards. Since that time, PADI has come up with a new standard that has some ideas that Mandy wants to adopt. Mandy will re-draft the freediving standard and submit it to the other members of the board before the next meeting.

On a similar note, PADI has also come up with new forms for Liability and Assumption of Risk forms. Mandy will also submit revised forms for freediving.

March Western Regional Competition

Kirk reported that the recent competition went well, although there were some problems:

  • Underwater video did not work well.
  • Safety diving team had to be organized at the last minute.
  • One safety scuba diver was unavailable because he lost his glasses overboard.
  • Two hours of pool time was not quite enough for 9 competitors to run the static and dynamic competition.
  • Ribbons for individual disciplines were not awarded correctly. Ties should be broken by overall point score, not just static point score.

The company that provided EMT support provided service to the competition at a reduced rate. Ken will provide info on the EMT’s to Tom so that he can list them as a sponsor for the competition.

Kirk mentioned that it was getting harder to get people to volunteer to do safety scuba. After the novelty wears off, divers feel unrecognized. Solutions considered were providing a list of contributing officials and safety divers on each competition’s web page, and providing lunch to safety divers after the competition.

May 2002 Nationals

  • Rowand’s Reef dive store will be the official organizer of the event with Ken McCallum as the main point man.
  • Ken will directly recruit safety divers.
  • Mandy will book pools and boats.
  • Competition briefing will be held on the Friday, 6:30pm at Rowand’s Reef.
  • Static competition will be held on the Friday evening after the briefing. Probably 8:00pm at Jericho Hill Pool.
  • Constant ballast competition will be on Saturday afternoon. There will be a big tide exchange that day so the competition will be held from a boat, free-floating near Bowyer Island.
  • Dynamic competition will be held on the Sunday morning at Watermania in Richmond.
  • Awards ceremony will probably be held at the Granville Island Hotel.
  • The competition will hold a maximum of 20 competitors.
  • Competition fees will be $125.
  • Kirk is hoping to raise $500 in sponsorship for the competition. Mandy will update the sponsorship document from last year’s Nationals.

Competitive Member Upgrade

Before the last competition, one member raised concern over the cost of upgrading his regular membership to a competitive membership since the competition was only a few months before his membership was up for renewall. Would he have to pay the full $75 upgrade cost or would the upgrade be pro-rated to the remainder of his membership year?

The decision of the executive was that membership upgrades could be pro-rated but only on a first-time basis. That is, if a member was previously competitive and then downgraded to regular upon renewal, that member would have to pay the full $75 upgrade if he wanted to compete within that year.

The pro-rating forumula works as follows:

Months Remaining Cost
>0 – <=3 18.75
>3 – <=6 37.50
>6 – <=9 56.25
>9 – <=12 75.00

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 10:30pm.