2003 CAFA Annual General Meeting

September 30, 2003

CAFA President’s Report
Judges Committee Report
Competition Committee Report
2004 World Bid & Team Canada Report

CAFA Members,

The 2002-2003 CAFA season drew to an end on June 30th of this year, our 3rd year as the Canadian Association of Freediving and Apnea. Over the last three years we’ve seen a steady growth in our membership, activities and prestige across Canada and internationally.

I’d like to acknowledge the tireless work that the 2002-2003 CAFA Executive Board has shown. The CAFA Executive is a working board that requires the constant participation of its working members and that each member has made personal sacrifices of their time, energies and more often than not, finances. There is still much work to be done over the coming years and the board is still working to organize itself in a more efficient manner and we look forward to that challenge with whoever makes up the upcoming board members.

I’d like to personally thank Tom Lightfoot, Vice-President, Secretary and Webmaster who kept me in line and organized along with his tireless energy as a competitor and tireless work as webmaster. Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, our Treasurer and world record athlete who is also in charge of Membership Services, which includes keeping us abreast of the egroups lists and other issues. Perry Gladstone with his work in Marketing & Promotion and keeping our sponsor and partnership needs in the eye of those who it matters. I’d also like to thank Perry for helping organize our board on a more professional level and for being the “easterner we always wanted”. Lastly Ken McCallum for his work as Director of Technical Development and his continuous work in helping develop, organize and judge nearly every CAFA competition since our inception. To all these members who gave up hundreds of hours of precious time to the board egroups and our once a month phone meetings, THANK YOU!

Although there are many good and positive things over this last year, most importantly we’ve learned some good lessons, which have required us to evaluate and redesign some of the ways in which we do things. A very successful regional competition in Ottawa was overshadowed by two somewhat unsuccessful competitions in Vancouver. We should keep in mind that although we learned well deserved lessons, we’ve completed more regional and national competitions involving constant ballast than nearly any other AIDA National, a total of thirteen regional/national and four international competitions including the Cyprus competition this past May. Nonetheless the CAFA Board took the extraordinary steps to suspend further competitions until such time as these issues could be addressed and we are steadily working towards reinstating competitions for the fall/winter of the current 2003 season.

This leads us to the ambitious and successful bid for the 2004 AIDA World Freediving Team Championships. It’s been the goal of CAFA to host a world championship competition and during the Cyprus competition it seemed that CAFA should step up to the plate or no world championships in the 2004 season may happen. By the time the bid process started, another country entered the process and soon Canada and Egypt were working hard to swing the votes in their favor. During this time we’ve managed to put together a list of partners which include such notable members as Nuytco Research and Can-dive, both managed by Vancouver diving pioneer Phil Nuyten, Noah Russell and Apex Tents, Ron Hand and Amphibico, Hamish Tweed and H2O Madness Adventures, Performance Freediving and many other companies. As of September 28th we’ve officially won the bid and now the majority of the work begins. It should be noted that the majority of the CAFA Board worked tirelessly and did an exceptional job in pulling together to put forth the most impressive bid ever. We now look forward to the coming 10 months of work and the fruits they’ll produce for CAFA and it’s members in the eyes of the international community.

CAFA continues to lead the world in it’s development of competitive freediving and most notably has been the adoption of many of our practices such as the CAFA Safety Protocols for Competitions and Records which is under adoption by AIDA International. Another notable achievement has been continued creation of AIDA International Level Judges within Canada and currently one of our newest AIDA Judges, Perry Gladstone, is currently in Venezuela officiating world record attempts. In this pool of dedicated individuals I’d like to acknowledge the tireless efforts of Helen Lightfoot, CAFA National Judge, who’s worked each CAFA competition and Canadian based world record attempt. We look forward to more participation at a closer level from Helen in the near future.

Lastly, we need to acknowledge the achievements of those CAFA members, athletes and volunteers who have worked hard to make CAFA into the worlds premiere freediving association. I’d like to acknowledge Luc Gosselin’s impressive Canadian National Static record of 7:14, Peter Scott’s 125m dynamic national record, Brent Pascall’s 95m no-fins dynamic record, Jade Luettenegers 56m dynamic no fins, Tom Lightfoot’s 43m constant ballast no-fins and Mandy-Rae Cruickshank’s numerous records including 119m dynamic national record a 65m constant ballast dive at the Pacific Cup setting a competition world record, 6:06 static apnea competition world record and finally her recent 41m constant ballast without fins world record. All of these completed during the 2002-2003 season. I’d especially like to acknowledge the commitment and sacrifice Hamish Tweed of H2O Madness has made to see the development of safety scuba diving for competitions and records.

Lastly and most importantly I’d like to acknowledge each and every CAFA member who volunteered their time towards making CAFA an association to be proud of and something we can all take part in. CAFA is only as strong as it’s members and in my view we’re the granite base that holds the statue of the Canadian flag and a freediver passing through it with a plate for all to read saying: “The Canadian Association of Freediving and Apnea aims to further the development, safety and promotion of the sport of freediving both recreationally and competitively within Canada and abroad.”

Sincerely,

Kirk Krack
CAFA President and Founder

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