This Sunday see the arrival of the first dinghy points racing this season.
With the new season comes some new arrangements – its only a few minor tweaks to keep things fresh and hopefully find some new ways of making things better.
The headline change is probably that this season the Fast Cats will be starting first.
Fast Cats Starting First
This means our order of starts will be:
- Fast & Medium Cats
- Sprint 15s
- Mono-hulls
A number of factors contributing here but probably the two most noteworthy are that we wanted to give the newer and younger sailors a clearer starting area and less boats to deal with whilst launching and that clearing the line of the faster boats early means we can set them a longer course with less impact on overall race management times. The real focus here is to make racing as accessible as possible to as many as possible.
Short Course Handicap
The other big change seems a little more complicated but actually is very simple.
- We won’t be setting a course called “Cadet Course”.
- We will be setting a course called “Short Course Handicap”
Told you it was simple………………
(The only complication is we might not have caught up with changing the signing on sheets yet:-)
The short course handicap course is intended to be sailed by anyone of any age in any boat that wishes to sail a short course. This course is ideal for anyone wishing to concentrate on improving their sailing, or that simply wishes to sail a shorter course.
We expect to see a mixture of cadets and adults sailing this course with plenty of coaching going on and top tips being exchanged, the application of the “outside assistance rules” will be relaxed for this fleet, particularly if you need a little help righting your boat after a capsize (It happens to all of us – you could take the view that if you don’t capsize every now and then perhaps you are not pushing hard enough —- maybe that’s just me 🙂
Cadets Aged 14 & Over
We are removing the requirement for a Cadet to get a parent to sign them on for a race. We should point out that parents are responsible for their charges at all times at MSC, but you all know that already.
In addition any cadet aged 14 or over can now race in any fleet.
Those under this age should be encouraged to sail in the short course handicap – it will be much more fun.
For those Cadets who sail a number of different classes of boats throughout a season/series who would normally find their results split between these classes, we are looking at the possibility for grouping all of your individual results regardless of class of boat and offering some prizes for this- if you are a cadet and have a view on this please could you pass this on to you Cadet Fleet Captain (Jack) or your Cadet Coordinator (John).
Most of your sailing sub are practicle people and we are not great at paperwork – The Sailing Instructions (and the guidance for R.O.s) are being revised and we will have them available as soon as we can.
Happy Racing Everyone- See You On The Water.
1 Comment
Great positive changes here, well done Sailing Sub!