starting signals

Hi Hurricane,

I think that, in practice, and wrongly, as you have said, we all set our watches to the sound signals. Often, particularly in club racing, when the start line is not far from the shore and the launching area, some people don't even launch until the 'warning signal' and prior to that they are messing about with their boats on the shore, they wait for the sound signal with their watches on zero, or countdown, and then just hit the button on the sound signal.

In some clubs, like my own, probably 75% of club members who act as race officers, haven't got a clue about the flags and sound signals and their sequences. It became such a problem that the club invested in a timing device fitted to the hooter that automatically sounds at 5,4,1,0 (see www.autohoot.com). Even then, we are lucky to get the flags going up and down in the right order.  With this 'automatic' system, it is still easy to raise a flag at the wrong time purely through the inexperience of the race officer.  Again, like you say, most people just work off the sound signals, even though it is wrong.  The good thing with the 'automatic' sound signals is that they are absolutely accurate so everyone is happy.

I think that many club sailors, at small clubs, who only do duties a couple of times a year, and who don't race themselves (and particularly windsurfers who have no interest in dinghy racing anyway and have been, in my opinion, wrongly allocated race officer duties for dinghy racing), struggle with the whole business of setting courses, starting races and using the equipment available. The funny thing is that, often, they never get any better, they do it so infrequently that they forget, or they never make any effort to learn in the first place until they turn up at the club on the day, and then they complain that nobody has shown them what to do.

This is another topic in itself i.e. allocation of duties, race officer training, 'no duty' memberships, etc., etc.  The consequence of all this is that it is always the same small group of people who are detailed to run the various open meetings throughout the year.

Ian  (Yorkshire Dales S.C.)

Dr C.

We now have 6 races at the Grafam cat open.  I did not know about this, but apologies on whom ever did it wrong's behalf.  I am sure it was a mistake that will never happen again at the Cat open.  I've never heard of this happening before at Grafham, we usually get it right.  Come to the next Cat open and I will buy you a beer to make up for it.

Want to hear a bigger farce,

My sons untill recently sailed Toppers, an intensely competitive fleet with big numbers , they attended an inland regatta the last regatta of the travellers and decider of overall postions in series for many.

Due to layout it was possible for spectators to stand below starters balcony on Start layline to watch the fun on the poorly set line , race started in complete confusion , flags and horns a plenty !, r.o was heard to request general recall which was made with flags and sound signals , a rib rounded up leaders and front half of fleetand his calls of generall recall were clearly heard ashore and he sent them back , then R.O decided to let race continue !!!!

When the unfortunate youngsters - many of whom weren't over the line appealed for redress (quite rightly as they had been seriously affected by the R.O's actions) , redress was denied alongside the unfortunate sequence of events even happening !!!

Infact the class coach was asked to get the redress seekers to withdraw their request !

The R.O in question was an imported "expert" to help out an inexperienced club , not much help !

Needless to say we never returned there

Ooh now I'm intrigued, did anyone take it further? Can spectators be called to a protest committe?