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Dear readers,

At an extraordinary executive committee meeting of the German Sailing Association last Monday, plans were presented for the future reorganisation of the Cruising and Leisure Sailing division, which also includes the Cruiser Division (KA). According to the plans, this is to be dissolved.

• Is the cruiser division about to be disbanded?

A strategy for the coming years is to be developed under the title "Shaping the future of sailing together". This also includes scrutinising the organisation's own performance and services. Against this backdrop, it was decided to submit a motion at the next Sailing Council meeting to cancel the working regulations of the KA, i.e. to dissolve them in their current form.

Argument: Only those who pay an annual membership fee of 22 euros can benefit from the services of this organisation, which was founded in 1911 and is still the largest for cruising sailors with 14,815 members. All other members of the DSV would miss out. In addition, the number of KA members has been falling continuously for several years.

Whoever thinks "then abolish the contribution!" is a rogue! - because that is de facto a consequence of the project anyway. Obviously there are other motives for abandoning this institution. What they are is pure speculation.

But the result is tragic. The cruiser division is a recognised force in organised sailing. It does not stand for "recreational sailing" or "popular sport", but for cruising as a sporting discipline. And it is to be feared that this area of sailing will lose its lobby.

Crews who sail on sea-going yachts and set themselves ambitious goals to achieve learn that they can only achieve them if they function in a similar way to a regatta crew. And that sailing day and night is just as physically demanding. They experience what it means to live together on board at sea, with everything that goes with it. And they take these experiences with them into their lives, just as athletes from all other disciplines do. And they pass these experiences on.

KA was born out of this idea and promoted it. The chronicler of the Potsdam Yacht Club gives an impressive account of this time:

"Members of other yacht clubs also made many voyages at that time. However, there was no proper evaluation, no real competition that systematically increased performance; the German Sailing Association wanted nothing to do with these things. It saw its work as being fulfilled by the cultivation of racing. For this reason, the 'German Cruiser Yacht Association' was later founded in 1911, completely independently of the DSV."

• History: Kreuzer department, what is that anyway?

Six years later, it did join the DSV as a cruiser department. Exactly one hundred years ago, the KA cruising competition was launched and there was a noticeable upswing in cruising. Until then, yacht voyages had been either relaxing holiday trips with many days in harbour or transfers to regattas, but now the ambition was to sail to ever more remote destinations.

In order to ensure a fair assessment, KA created a formula that was used to assess the voyages submitted. This included nautical miles, harbour days, night sailing, engine performance and help from pilots, crew strength and the type of vessel. As in racing, this formula was heavily criticised, changes were discussed and made, and it had an impact on the way boats were built and equipped and how they were sailed.

Members' yachts were listed in the clubs' yearbooks with the nautical miles sailed and nights spent at sea, sailors attended sailing schools and contacts abroad increased.

From then on, cruising was a sporting discipline. The KA took care of everything associated with it. This included training, the exchange of information and the visibility of achievements as such. "The sea has no gallery" says an old saying, meaning that the crew is alone at sea. They cannot hold a medal up to the camera afterwards to prove their sporting achievement. The idea of the KA was to change that. A timeless idea, one that will never outlive itself.

Admittedly, that was a long time ago. Times have changed. Nowadays, tangible lobbying is required to preserve the habitat of sailors. There are wind and national parks, environmental protection and an ever-increasing regulatory frenzy that doesn't stop at us sailors. KA also offers courses and training literature, personalised sailing advice and a worldwide network of bases. Four full-time staff and six volunteers are involved in maintaining it.

But it is also part of the story that KA has changed. Insiders can ponder the why more profoundly than I can. If you ask them, you get answers that aren't pretty. That the KA has been neglected, the printed members' magazine "Nautische Nachrichten" has been discontinued and the training programme has been transferred to the DSV Academy, the Cruising Day and the KA as such are no longer advertised as intensively as they used to be.

Perhaps it would also have done the KA itself good if it had been given a strategy for the future. A contemporary "CI", high-quality prizes with partners from the water industry for the cruise competition, other formats for the submitted travel reports, an appealing website on which the experience reports could have been presented in contemporary forms, an app that would have made it easy to access the information, which is all still there and, above all, is still really good.

It is doubtful whether a "Leisure Sailing" department, which is also responsible for cruising, will be able to replace what has so far been achieved under the umbrella of KA with its own voluntary board and corresponding areas of responsibility.

It is to be feared that with the abolition of the KA, cruising will also lose a clearly visible lobby. And that the cruising sailors will lose a home. In my view, that would be more than sad - and would send the wrong signal to the members of the German Sailing Association.

Lasse Johannsen,

Deputy Editor-in-Chief YACHT

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