Club Racing Formats

For Club racing we are trialling awarding equal series points for crews & helms. You could win a series crewing a couple of different boats and a few goes in your single hander.

We award average points for RO,and Safety boat plus Galley.
interesting on the joining fee front we have just upped ours to £50 to discourage people who always leave paying the membership to well beyond the cut off date causing the membership sec no end of hassle chasing.
It was £10 before so no deterrent and some always took the micky.

We offer a reasonable discount to members who renew within one month of the AGM to assist with rapid renewals but a hardened few always seem to be late.

Have tried short race series and even splitting a long series into several short ones with individual series winners plus an overall winner. Did not appear to make any difference to the turnout.

Also tried running 3/4 short races of 30 - 40 minutes back to back but last time two of these were scheduled, the race officer asked the assembled sailors want they wanted and they voted unanimously for a normal race. As the short races had been publicised, it was interesting that no supporters turned out!

Good thread which is in danger of veering off course in a good way.

My observation is that it's pretty hard to complete a series without scoring some DNC.   For most of us, life just gets in the way.  And for those that do complete a series, without counting any DNCs but come last in every race will invariably finish high in the final rankings for that series.   

Results for a series will show a huge overall entry but many of the competitors will score one or no actual race results, which does look a bit odd.  So, the reality of the action on the water is very different to a casual glance at the Saliwave results pages.

We just have to accept there often not enough active boats  to form sensible sized classes, even in the bigger clubs.  There are numerous reasons for this which can be argued elsewhere.

Clubs have to work with what they've got and provide the best racing they can.  

Although Yellow Welly has an utter abhorrence to handicap (spreadsheet as he calls it; which is possible a better name) racing, I think it's great and really enjoy it and would be happy to see a much greater emphasis on handicap racing at clubs struggling to hold fleet racing together.

Handicap racing delivers more boats per race, more variety, the comical absurdity of a 49er racing a Terra and a general bringing together of people who enjoy dinghy racing, irrespective of which class they sail.  It's also pretty easy to introduce personal handicaps giving us more incompetent racers a chance.

Oh, and pursuit races are also great.

For those of you die-hard class racing fans, all I can say is you can continue to have you class results scored as a sub set of results in the main event.

For me, I would like a club to have a class race in the morning and a mass handicap/pursuit race in the afternoon.   And Summer evening races would just be handicap.






Edited by boatshed - 04 Dec 13 at 9:44am

Clubs need to work out what they want to achieve & incentivise members accordingly. Should the regular guy who turns out in all weathers to race and support the club in galley / bar revenue be rewarded or penalized? Consider that s/he may get results in the top few when the circuit sailors are away and be pushed down the fleet when the travelers are at home. The higher the discard percentage, the higher chance of the traveler cleaning up the booze / glassware / silver. Not much incentive for the mid-fleet regular there.
I do agree that 'qualification' sends the wrong message. If I can't 'qualify' for the series, let alone win it, why would I turn out?