2020 K1 Club Racing Championships - Lockdown Nationals

K1 Club Champs © Restart Sailing

As with most classes, the K1 class association has seen the cancellation of its 2020 National Championships, and many open meetings due to the Covid-19 situation. In these challenging times the K1 class association were keen to find ways of maintaining contact with its sailors and interest in sailing K1s, particularly as the class is celebrating its ten-year anniversary this year.

Working with RestartSailing and SailRacer, the Class Association came up with an innovative solution to get K1 sailors out racing across the country in a safe socially distanced manner.

The inaugural K1 Club Racing Championships, saw racing at 10 clubs from Teignmouth in the south west to South Windermere, some 270 miles due north. Reflecting the versatility of the K1, the venues reflected a wide cross-section of waters, from the narrows of the River Avon, some 40m wide for the Tewkesbury sailors to the open waters and big waves of Lyme Regis, with a few big reservoirs such as Rutland and Datchet thrown in for good measure.

The flexible format allowed each club to hold at least one race over the weekend (19-20 September), with many incorporating into existing club races, with some managing to run four races.

To record and track their race, each sailor used a pre-configured SailRacer tracker. SailRacer tracking provided live coverage of each race for every competitor and recorded start, leg and finish times for each boat, including the number of laps completed. Friends and family could watch all the races live online, while the sailors could replay their races and learn from a wealth of leg by leg analytics.

Using the SailRacer GPS App the club leads were able to set-up their own races, including pinging their course or using pre-defined club buoy libraries. SailRacer HQ remotely monitored club race configurations and helped where required. Datchet set the longest course (1.9 miles) with Ogston the shortest (0.6 miles).

"It was a good event and well thought out, we could do more like this as COVID does not appear to be going away at the moment." - David Tiney - Ogston SC (6th overall).

"Many thanks thanks to SailRacer for enabling us to put on an amazingly innovative and inclusive event - many sailors who would not normally travel to events were able to compete as well. The software coped well with the variety of conditions and locations. We shall certainly be doing this again in the future." - David Pritchett, Class Chair, Rutland SC (4th overall).

Overall results were based on each sailor's best result, corrected to course performance factor to give a Performance Index (Pi) for each race. The course performance factor takes into account the overall length, the number of laps, and each leg measurements, taking into account leg length and angle to the win. All the races were managed centrally by SailRacer, supported by RYA National Race Officer James Ripley. Although no protests were held, these could be lodged online including a tool to draw the incident and a jury was available to meet online.

A well-attended prize-giving was held online, included highlights from many of the events with some great video and photos.

Guy Woodhouse (Lyme Regis SC) achieved the fastest recorded speed on the SailRacer GPS trackers with a sustained 10.66 knots and a max of 14 knots surfing down some big waves off the Dorset Coast.

Alfie Hawksworth (Carsington SC) sailed the furthest at 11.7 miles.

Geoff King, K1 Class Sailing Secretary produced a fine trophy for the Lockdown Nationals, which was presented to Michael Alexander (Rutland SC), who had borrowed a boat for the championships and hopefully will be seen out at other K1 class events.

Overall Results:

Full results can be found here.