Poor Show by the RCYC .... hopefully they will will buckup their ideas.

...did Falmouth a few  years ago- had a great event, though some of the courses weren't the best. 

Chris - were the RCYC hosting the day's race ?

-if I remember,  each day there's a different host. so results will be posted in a different  club

Oh, doesn't sound much like our experience - but we did have fabuous weather and a lot of alcohol (!),  so race-management may have had an easier time.

... hope they  RCYC /whoever...  improve things - it can be a great regatta with a good format - different clubs hosting/running racing etc.  It made for a super week (for us), but we were a  bit annoyed  with of the course/race_managment  one or two  days.

Takes the  shine off a  regatta - people  take a lot of effort, time (holidays) and expense to get to regattas - organising  crews, accommodation, boat, transport etc...    ,....even if the social is  great, when races are messed with sailors will get annoyed.

At the final prize giving, there was a promise from the race officer of 4 days of windward/lewards and  only 2 days of regatta courses next year, so it should be alot better. To be fair, I think Falmouth Week had a good PRO who was hampered by pre-written set courses in the sailing instructions. By Friday he had posted an ammendment and set good windward leward courses. Four days like friday and 2 of longer costal/bay courses should be good next year, shame the format didn't change earlier this week.

Socials were all at the club hosting the day's regatta,

Hi, I am the Rear Commodore Sailing RCYC - Just for the record - Falmouth week racing is organised by PoFSA, effectively the combined Falmouth clubs. The race mangement for the week is under the direction of PoFSA. Socal events each day are hosted at different individual PoFSA clubs with the addition of a big week long shoreside entertainment programme in the Town at two locations. Details of all this is in the programme given to all competitors and on the website.  RCYC host two social events in the week and for both the club was fully open with teas, bar and a big welcome to all. On the Sunday it was Helford Club as the social host and centre. There was a great barbeque, steel band, real ale bar and a huge welcome with arrangements to tie up and get ashore, Sadly, most yachts decided to finish the race and go home. The racing in the Bay is a work progress with a new team headed by IRO Mike Pearson. I was an ARO. Both Mike and I agree that racing on some days on the courses that PoFSA gave us was not good. We should have anticipated this and reacted sooner. We attempted to improvise improvements during the week as the apportunity arose. The Bay race team has already determined a range of courses and other improvements for next year that will solve these problems. Stick with us,Falmouth is a fantastic venue, we all want the week to improve and grow, it will be great in 08 and the West Country tradition of a welcome to all is top of the agenda.

Tim,

Have to echo your closing comments - Falmouth has alwats been one of my favourite venues - thankfully we have been lucky enough to be at RCYC events only tho - and on both the social and racing front things were terrific.

Dear Falmouth Week Bay sailors,

Yes, this year's bay regatta courses on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday were just simply awful - but it was as big a disappointment for the race team as the sailors.  They are friends of mine who I know worked hard and were as diappointed as anyone when the regatta courses simply failed because of unkind shifting wind conditions rubbishing the course set.  They learnt a lesson and want to come back next year and sort it.  They have exciting embryo plans to lay trapeziodal type courses with an assistant race officer on each leg to relay the windward mark on a wind shift to keep the course true with the wind.  What more can a sailor ask for?

Give the race officer and his team fair due, they did set a extra super tapeziodal course on the Friday which gave superb competitive racing with the first 6 boats in IRC A class finishing within 71 seconds of each other after 2 1/2 hours racing - not bad?

Falmouth simply has the cleanest, best sailing waters combined with the best club hospitality anywhere.  My crew had a great time and we are making it our number one priority for the 2008 sailing season

Good sailing everyone and see you in Falmouth in 2008

Let Falmouth Week return to its normality

Gone are the days of great racing, good prize givings and fantastic evenings spent in the tent,drinking, talking to race officers and competitors of the great days racing we just all had, climbing the marquee poles and getting told off by some great big muscle man, giving away all the Red Stripe to every competitor that RACED.

Whats it all about now-a-days? MONEY but to whom and what for?

Over the years, since POSFA has been involved it has just got expensive and unrealistic to what Falmouth week is all about, i think its just a case of forgetting the very point of Falmouth Week.

I have lived in Falmouth all my life and sailed now for nearly 30 years. I can remember the tent for competitors and even Customs House Quay with greasy poles great evenings entertainment everywhere, Falmouth was just a buzy place with everybody in great spirit.

What do i hear now? People moaning about how much it cost for a drink in the PAVILLION!!! People moaning about how poor race management was, the race coarse are!

To be fair to POSFA, it is very difficult to set racing coarses right everytime, we all get things wrong from time to time.

On my boat we have not competed now for over 3 years in Falmouth Week, not because we dont want too, its a case of how can you justify taking a whole week off work for 2 hours racing a day. We all know that in Falmouth during August, its always around 1400hrs before the wind has set its mind up what it is going to do, so we start races at mid day, all thats achived is people get frustrated!!!!

Come on POSFA give Falmouth back its GREAT SAILING ability and make it worth while to visiting yachts persons and locals, or ask the local people what they want??? intead of worrying whats in it for Carrick.

As a business person of Falmouth i can tell you now, this is the worst Falmouth Weeks takings ever! in my trade i hear numerous competitors moaning every day, even some whom can not speak out aloud as they may wish too.

Please give the sailors back great racing as we know you can, plus OUR tent, not the Pavillion, who's ever idea's that was needs stringing up. Maybe concider starting racing later in the day to avoid shifting winds and giving local business men time to sort their businesses out in the morning before starting sailing in the afternoon, or just giving the competitors time to get over their bad heads from the night before!!!

Falmouth Week can be one of the best events in the yachting calender if only somebody looked at the potential that Falmouth has got on its door step!!!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, wake up to whats going on before you lose it ALL!!!

For what its worth I think some of the feedback here is a little harsh.  We were racing in the bay and had a fantastic week's sailing - good mix of courses and only one day where it was a bit of a procession owing to a windshift and I think there were boats on every leg so the windward mark couldnt be shifted.   As far as I am aware, the organisers visited a lot of the local clubs to see what people wanted - certainly we had an email from our class captain asking what we wanted in terms of courses....  we got exactly what we wanted and had a cracking time.  I also thought the race officer in the bay was very approachable, made the starting sequence and courses really clear  and was supportive of less experienced crews....  I would recommend the week to anyone.

Where criticism is justified is in the social side of things - it might have been better if the results could have made it to the clubs a bit sooner - but my main gripe was the shifting of the eveing ents to the Pavillions - Carribean Night was a disaster (last year it was a fantastic night out!) - so much so that they actually refunded our tickets.  The atmosphere at events square was really lacking too - probably as the two venues split the custom.....   it was also noticable that there were not many sailors evident at either places.  

polp

Did Falmouth Regatta Week happen?

Don't know, you tell me. I'm a local competitor and I was not impressed with the week for a number of reasons. Firstly, there wasn't any regatta atmosphere. The event was badly advertised and the racing was a shambles. The races were not long enough and the courses were badly set. I had taken the week off work and i wish I hadn't.  

I was also unimpressed with the race committee. For instance on monday the race committee set a course with the windward mark on the western side of the bay, where there happened to be a shipping movement, so instead of postponing for 30 - 45 minutes they started, which meant the front of the fleet sailed in front of a rather large ship but were able to pass safely at about 100meters across the ships bow. The pilots weren’t very happy about this so the race committee gave warning to the two offending yachts and no further action was taken on that day. The race committee said that the two offending yachts acted stupidly and irresponsibly. In my mind the race committee were more irresponsible for starting the race and should have known better.

So come on POSFA, here is your chance to air your opinion! We are all waiting for you to put your point over to us.

On another matter which i forgot to add earlier, THE CHAMPAGNE RACE. How can you advertise and put in the race instructions i believe, 6 bottles for winning boat, 2 for second and 1 for third place!!!!

It was decided, 2 bottle for 1st place,(FINE) 1 bottle for 2nd place(fine) and 0 for 3rd place(DISCRACEFUL). with 15 or so bottles left over for a Porche Boxster outside the Watersports Centre! What happened to these i ask myself??? or was they returned to Marks & Spencers??

re posting from urbantiger, on shipping movements incidents, Falmouth Bay is  now increasingly busy with the bunkering demand for low carbon fuel. There now many daily shipping movements every week. PoFSA and all the local clubs have a superb working relationship with the pilots and there was full cooperation and only one problem when the red mist descended and two yacts skippers had a moment of madness.I was part of the race committee and right there when this incident happened. The pilots where as surprised as I as at the momentary lack of judgement of the boats concerned but left it to the Race Committee to resolve and there was no formal complaint. The Race Officer decided thet a birsk talking to would suffice and that no further action was required. The protest was not a race committee action. Frequent shipping movements in Falm oputh Bay are now an established practice. We work well with the Pilots and there mopstly no problems when skippers react to requests from race committee safety boats

I really dont think that anybody is blaming POSFA for their actions with the result of this stupid actions from mindless sailors, in my opinion the situation was handled quite correctly.

What people are trying to say is, why is the coarse in that part of the bay when they know there is to be shipping movements? whats up with Gerrans bay! a mile east of Black Rock.

On many occassions now, regatta's are needing to make alterations for shipping movements, this has to happen for the ports finacial benifit and the good of Falmouth, so knowing these movements are taking place move the race area to accomadate this to avoid any such reacurrances.

Gary Denning

POFSA as the organising body for the regatta, have a duty to run a safe and professional race organisation out in the Bay for the competitors, whom have all paid good money out to race and should be expect to get it. There is plenty of clear water out there, so why do we have to dodge shipping whilst racing?

The less said about Sundays mind and bum numbingly boring race the better. Once again the results for that days racing were published very late that evening, but if you ask someone to do them you'd better make damn sure that she knows how to do it before the event! Thank you to the two ladies who eventually managed produced them on behalf of Helford.

To be fair to the Bay Race Officer I'm told that he didn't write the set courses for the week but they were just shocking, with absoloutely no imagination whatsoever. Still at least by Friday he ignored the printed instructions and gave everyone the racing they were clamouring for all week.

The race officer who started a race, where the 1st mark was laid just off to windward of the bow of a vessel raising it's anchor, fails to give instructions to the officials on a saftey boat in the vicinity of the said mark regarding the directions to the competitors and then intimates that it's all racers fault for not keeping clear! Not very professional .A ten minute postponment could have been considered prudent by some. And whoever subsequently let the protest committee pass the ruling that they came to, following an out of time(allegedly) request for redress, should be embarrassed to say the least. Where were the findings published? Not on the regatta notice board - allegedly!

Ashore, where was the focal venue for the sailors this year?

The regatta tent was kicked out of the Surfy Dude Pizza Plaza, because of the complaints from the neighbours who bought a property/business beside the event square or was it due to financial gain by Carrick D.C? It's not called the EVENT SQUARE for nothing. I hope that POFSA made loads of cash from that deal because if not they've failed to look after the interests of the sailors - young and old. Carrick certainly won't let the tent make a reapperance at the expense of their Pavillion venue where the price of drinks took the ****. Remind Carrick that it's Falmouth regatta week for sailors, visitors welcome, and not just the drunken lowlife.

Bring back the tent on the lawn by the Greenbank Hotel for the sailors. Have different styles of race courses to provide variety and be more flexible in where they are started out in the bay. Lay marks well clear of the shore and local conditions where the wind should be more predictable for all competitors.Lay proper marks that visibly stand out, not an old length of downpipe hiding in the swell and only seen when you fall over it!  Fax the results ashore immediately from the committee boats and pay someone to produce them in time for the prize giving.

Oh, and can someone do something about the weather!!!!!!!!!