From the Sailing Secretary
The season started with the Freezer series in very windy fashion, so much so that out of the first four scheduled races only one was held and only three boats finished that race. The weather did improve for the rest of the series and as the weeks progressed more boats came out of hibernation each weekend. There was even an exceptionally good turnout on a Saturday when no racing was scheduled. The best supported fleets were the fast handicap with many Contenders participating throughout, and the Asymmetric fleet with RS200s making their presence felt. The Slow handicap fleet had a patchy turnout with only one boat sailing at all regularly. The Catamarans had a flurry of boats in mid series but were noticeable by their absence whenever the forecast was windy or light winds.
The new high points scoring system with no discards and more points going to the winner when the fleets were larger had a testing time in producing up to date series results as there were hiccups in the production of the results in the first place. I must ask all race officers to ensure that results have been calculated before they leave. To this end the signing on sheets have been amended so that results can be manually calculated, if there is no computer present, and shown on the signing on sheets. PY and SCHRS ratings are in the race box and a new calculator has been provided. Instructions for manual calculation are provided and if stuck please ask the duty officer for help but be prepared to be shown how – the duty officer is not there to do it for you. Normally you will be able to put the results in the laptop computer but please add to the printed results details of any boats that you were not able to enter. The computer is locked to prevent entry of additional boats as these were not well entered last year and will now be entered by Gail Pussard’s results team.
The results of the Freezer Series will be on the website. Some people were caught out by the scoring system and thought they had not done enough races to qualify for the series when in fact they had finished in the prizes. However, winning a series or finishing second or third only qualifies you for a prize, you have to be at the prizegiving to actually win a prize. Maggie Futcher (Byte CII) gave the scoring system a big thumbs up because not only did she attend the prizegiving despite thinking she had not sailed enough races to qualify, she had actually finished second and was able to collect her prize.
The scoring system will be used again in the Spring Chicken Series but it has been tweaked slightly so do read the notice by the Gent’s changing room door. Also, anyone doing a duty who wishes to claim average points must claim them on the signing on sheet.
Following many complaints, members will now have a discount when entering open meetings. The discounts vary from £10 to £20 per day so there is now much less excuse for not taking part in your own class open meeting. We hope that this will increase participation by club members. There is a smaller discount for members of other Southampton Water Sailing Association clubs who can also get a discount on the day sailing fee. If you have friends at local clubs you can now invite them to join in a race at Weston at a lower cost. We need to have more boats on the water to improve everyone’s enjoyment. Remember the Weston Grand Slam is free to members.
On April 3rd there will be a committee boat start as we hold a rehearsal for open meetings. The first race will be postponed by half an hour to accommodate this and then two races will be held back to back.
Thank you all for reading this and if you have any comments about the sailing, good or bad, please pass them on to the sailing committee. The impossible we will strive to do immediately; miracles take a little longer.
Julius Mach
Sailing Secretary
0 comments:
Post a Comment