Our Portugal Footy register has moved away and has left a vacancy. Any volunteers in Portugal to take on the job? For France, Christophe Klein takes over from Gilbert Pétin for boat registrations. Many thanks to Antonio and Gilbert for your good work.

The IFCA Executive Committee has sent us a revised IFCA Charter. You'll find a link at the bottom of the REGISTER page. This charter is mostly concerned with rules governing the administration of the association, not the rules for boat design.

Peter Shephard sends us a link to his new Footy Website in the UK. You'll find it on the LINKS page.

Pawel Dejnak sends along links to a Polish website, with temporary pages for Czech and Slovenia skippers. Pawel also provided me with a great many photos. I have put his group photo of skippers to the Euro GP 2010 on the homepage, and added three photos from the 2012 Polish Footy championships to the PHOTOS page. I'm saving the rest of his photos for later.

On the PHOTOS page you will also find Mike Bayard's "3-Footy", Rodney Horsfal's boat, Jim Knorr's boat, Dieter Schmitz's three Swiss Footys and lastly Thomas Grimm's Orca. Thomas is measuring his boat's receiver battery with a fancy HiTech iView gadget. Neat.

We now have a French footy website link on the LINKS page.

Wayne Russell's bottle yacht appears in the PHOTOS sections and a link off the PLANS page.

Marcus Wahlin hopes to offer plans for his Breithorn soon, but plans for the sail rig are available now for five Swiss francs (about $5). Look under "Kit Sources" on the LINKS page.

Novrizal Herdananto from Indonesia sends photos of his first Footy. Tony Ashdon sends photos of his WoodenBoat Store plans boat (the design is called Brando). By coincidence, I have also heard from Brando's designer, Flavio Faloci. He sends pictures of his Presto design as well as many more pictures from the Italian fleet. See the LINKS page for a URL or just visit woodenboatstore.com and search for Footy. They also carry a book Flavio wrote on building Presto as well as a kit.

Flavio has also created a new Italian Footy website (see the LINKS page).

Bill Hagerup has sent me a rule clarification for Footys, affecting above deck brackets for routing the sheet. There's a link at the top of the TECHNICAL page.

And lastly Brazil's Frederico Schmidt Filho has created an English language blog on Footy design. Look under "Blogs" on the LINKS page.

In the PLANS section we have information on Bill Hagerup's new Ranger. It includes links to discussion threads and rough-drawn plans. This boat was recently featured in the AMYA magazine, MODEL YACHTING (Spring 2011, No. 163).

On the LINKS page you'll find a link to "le blog footy-fr". This was set up by our French registrar Gilbert Petin. All in French!

Thorsten Hochstadt sent us a photo of his boat with a sardine-like keel weight. See it in the PHOTOS section.

Peter Henderson has sent us information and links on his vacuum form Footy, the "1299". You'll find information on the LINKS page, and the ARTICLES page. There are also photos on the PHOTOS pages. The article has lots of interesting details about assembling the boat from a sheet of molded styrene. He sells the sheets for 35 pounds in the UK.

We are delighted to welcome new Registrars: Eduardo Ramos for Argentina, Harald Klein for Austria, and Maximiliab Eder for Ecuador.

And lastly, Marcus Wahlin sends us news that his "Breithorn" Footy will soon be available. See the link on the LINKS page.

On the LINKS page we've added Andy Stone's blog about his youth group's boatbuilding project. You'll also find some photos of the results in the PHOTOS pages.

Also in the PHOTOS pages, Demura sends a photo of his Footy's launching ceremony from Japan and another of a boat under construction. After the earthquake he sent a peaceful scene of a boat and cherry blossoms.

You'll also find photos of Thorsten Hochstadt's ESP 1, and a boat from China.

In the RACING section you'll find the complete 2011 UK Calendar.

On the RULES page you'll find a link to Thorsten Hochstadt's Footy box plans, with Peter Schueller's accompanying diagrams.

Thomas Grimm has volunteered to act as registrar for Belgium. Olivier de Tauzia is transferring the job of the French registrar to Gilbert Pétin. Many thanks to Olivier for his past work as registrar!

Barry Philips sends this sad news:

It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that Angus Richardson has passed away peacefully at Wrexham Maelor Hospital.

Angus died 04:30hrs on 6 April at Wrexham Maelor Hospital where he was being treated for a urine infection. In the end it was Acute Kidney failure and Pneumonia.

The funeral is on for Friday next week 11:00am at Bangor crematorium and after a pub named The Abbeyfield Hotel in Tal-y-Bont. LL57 3UR.

Angus was a major force in the development of both this website and UK Footy scene. He will be sorely missed.

Read the complete obituary here.

The Editor

In the Photos section Andy Stone has sent photos of his Papaya 3 with a Bermudan rig and cabin. Kevin Gault sent a photo of his modified Kittiwake kit. We also have shot of Scott Wallis' Razor 3 made up Depron sheet.

In other updates, Thomas Grimm has contributed a nice article in German to the Articles page.

We have two new country registrars: Thorsten Hochstadt for Spain, Fred Schmidt for Brazil. Fred also has a blog, the address is on the Links page.

Thanks to all these folks who've contributed to keeping the Footy class active!

Andy Trewin (UK) has very kindly donated his slideshow to the website. He has been using these slides to give presentations popularizing the Footy class at various sailing clubs in the UK. It's now a permanent part of this website, just click the Slideshow tab at the top of this page!

The results from a recent poll of registered Footy skippers concerning rig restrictions are in. According to this ballot:

• There is no restriction on how many sail rigs may be used
• There is no restriction on the 'B' rig dimensions

As in all model sailboat racing classes, the rules are a balance between innovation and racing skill. In larger yacht classes a skipper with enough money for multiple sail rigs could dominate skippers who couldn't afford so many, but in the Footy class rigs are cheap. In addition, with a young class like the Footy, we may have yet to discover the ideal rig, so encouraging innovation is a good thing.

The Footy Euro GP 2009 regatta was held Sat/Sun, 18-19 July at the Birkenhead MYC in the UK. Of particular interest was the presence of a contingent from Poland and the dominance of a boat called Moonshadow. Read all about it in the full Race Report provided by Angus Richardson.

Pawel Dejnak sent me email about his new Footy design, the "Opalek". The plans are published in the current issue of Mlody Technik ("young technician"). For a month you can see them on-line at the magazine's website in the June 2009 issue. The text is in Polish, but it's chock-full of nice photos.