Grafham Reminder

Good point. Maybe we can get the finished boats to keep clear by covering it at the briefing.

Regards

Bob

I also found the gate/finish area to be too congested, and would favour putting the gate above the finish line, even if only by having the CTB below one of the gate marks to form a finish line. I'd be happy to pay a quid extra to fund bow numbers. 

A separate issue re the 3 minutes... as the first fleet to start, I found the three minutes to be rather short notice. All later fleets had 6 minutes or more warning. Have you tried simulating this for the first fleet by flying the AP flag and dropping it a minute (or 3) before the first class flag goes up, etc.

Hi Guys,

The successful running of an event of the complexity of the Grafham Cat Open (with so many classes and so many starts) is greatly helped by using average lap times and finishing all boats once the course shortening flag is flown. This means that different classes, and different ability sailors can do different number of laps and yet still get a result. It simplifies the race officers task (which is already pretty tough) and enables a quick turn around between races as you are not waiting for stragglers to finish.

The consequence of using average lap times means that all laps have to be the same and that all competitors must pass through the finish line each lap.

This being the case it is difficult to see how the Tornado course could be used.  Options to improve on what we used this year are such things as:

1) give more space between the 2 leeward marks (gate) and the finish line gate as has been suggested elsewhere on this chat thread.

2) Remove one of the leeward marks and keep it a simple port rounding.

3) Have 2 leeward marks, one to leeward of the other and no leeward gate. Send 2 fleets round 1 (to port) and the other 2 fleets round the other (also to port) as we did on course B. This just helps reduce the congestion at the leeward marks but limits the options available to the sailors.

Comments / preferences welcome.

Cheers

Bob

imo  dont go back to the old system its nearly right now!

bit further away for the gate as you say.

if it goes t-ts up on the comm boat at least you can finish everyone and sort it out later.

finishing downwind is much harder for the race team and confusing for the sailors.

wouldnt mind paying an extra pound for bow numbers, as the entry fee was pretty reasonable anyway for six races. not sure how much it would help though as my bows were under water most of sunday anyhow

3 minute starts are the only way to go with that many fleets to get away