Grafham Reminder

Hey Simon,

An excellent idea, I had spoken to Hilary about this during the event and she has promised to take a look at the possibility of using the standard si's for the spitfires/tornados.

Which would make the Grafham open just like most class cat opens with the gate and start line swapped.

BTW: the 3min start sequence although unusual, certainly seemed to work interms of keeping the fleet seperated. ie: We didn't start with nearby downwind boats in the vicinity.

http://www.tornado.org/uploads/documents/Championship%20Cour se.pdf

Regards JR

The hurricanes are known for there sense of humor,rather than there lap counting ability as we have seen in previous years at graftham.

as for the finish gate,  personally i would rather pass the leward mark to a finish line like we had a couple of years ago. should make life easier for the race team and give us the chance to go where we like up wind and down wind.

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

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.

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