Hi Laura,

Insurance coverage has become a requirement by the owners of the
facilities at most of the places where we have races.

For the Lake Sammamish race, for example, I have to send insurance
indemnification certificates to the WA State Parks, King County
and Sammamish Rowing Association in order to use the park, the
lake (for racing) and the use of the volunteer safety boats.

Officially, we need to provide such coverage at all the state and
county parks where we race, though some of the local official
representatives haven't been sticklers for that. Some of the
parks don't even require a group permit.

Also, if the club were to organize a group that would travel to a
race (not necessarily a SR event) then the club would be covered
against loss were an accident to happen en route.

In searching for insurance for the club I found that US Rowing,
ACA and USACK would not insure all of our members in our races.
They would insure the rowers and not the paddlers, or they would
insure the paddlers and not the rowers. I don't know how the SJC
got the ACA to insure the rowers this year. The ACA refused to
cover rowers (or pedal boats) when I queried them about it early
this year.

I got involved with the whole insurance issue when the lack of
the required insurance certificates started impacting the
schedule I had to meet in order to put on the Lake Sammamish
race. That is how I came to know anything about this stuff.
Marty was too busy at his job at the time, so he gave me the
go ahead to check it out. Squeaky wheel goes looking for the
grease. :-/

I think Marty should probably start checking into whether or
not we will continue with the MRA as the club's insurer for
2006. Perhaps some of the other insurers will have come around
to offering coverage for all of our racers, and perhaps at a
better rate.

Otherwise, the deal with the MRA is pretty reasonable. If all
the participants of a given race are SR or MRA members, then
there is *no* additional money sent to the MRA for that race.
None. Nada. Zilch. We only pay $10/member/year.

We could run 100's of races throughout the year at no extra
insurance cost, regardless of the number of certificates needed.

The only time additional money is sent to the MRA is for each
non-member in the race. Currently, that rate is $8 per person.

That seems pretty steep, but if that person were to want to
race a couple of times with the SR it would make a lot of sense
for that person to join the club.

Hmmm....what if we had a deal where we offered a free race entry
for people if they joined the SR? Ok, we'd lose $7 for the race,
but we'd have more members joining and a greater likelihood of
having more folks coming to future races.

To make this more equitable, perhaps this program wouldn't start
until, say, April or May, so current members would still want to
renew on time.

Just a thought.

--Michael Lampi

One thing that would be helpful for the membership and racer pool at large, at the beginning of the year (especially since it seems to change from year to year!) , front and center in the newsletter and this group, present the current insurance status, who needs to be a member of what - Sound Rowers, MRA, USACK, USRowing, ACA or ??? and encourage people to take care of this early and on their own.

That might simplify it for directors/treasurer by not having to process as many spontaneous memberships.

The other would be to put something in the newsletter encouraging folks to join this list...since specific changes to races gets posted here and often not in the NL.

The whole insurance thing is crazy...a lot of us end up having to spend a pile of $$ to join USACK (sprint kayaking and some outrigger races), US Rowing (most rowing competition, head of the Charles, etc), as well as our various clubs, all in the name of insurance.

At the Baker Bay Race, Vern and Janet were saying the Hawaiian outrigger races don't carry insurance...hmmm. European culture is so different than ours, their regattas typically don't carry any either. One friend I asked responded with "why would we want to spend $$ on that?"

Laura