On Saturday 14th January, Marconi members Mia Morgan, Pat Healey, David Nickalls and Peter Ward were invited to shadow the on water race officials and umpires in the British Winter Match Racing event at Queen Mary’s reservoir.
During a long postponement for high winds and heavy rain, the event officials and 9 sailing teams watched the windsurfers zipping past the fleet of RS21 keelboats on their moorings. Eventually the windsurfers were noticeably slower and that was the signal for the Match Racing to commence.
Like a well oiled machine, the officials cranked into action and by the time the fleet had rigged sails (1 reef in) and dropped off their moorings, the marks had been laid and the committee boat was set to get things started.
David and Peter joined umpire ribs, whilst Mia was given countdown timing duties on the committee boats where Pat soon became responsible for flag hoists and drops. Such important jobs had been delegated to the pair by Principal Race Officer David Campbell-James (1984 Olympics – Tornado with Rob White) who had been instrumental in setting up the British Match Racing series many years ago. David and his ARO, not only ran a very smooth event, but even had time during countdowns to share their wealth of knowledge with our Marconi members as they came to terms with being thrown in at the deep end.
The matches were run over the same course, at the same time, and the only thing that separated each match was the starting sequence. To the uninformed onlooker it must have seemed like a chaotic mix of keelboats surrounding an anchored motor boat with flags, whilst six high speed ribs zipped about between them! From the committee boat however, calm persisted and the sequence of events ran just like clockwork. Throughout the 17 minute countdown, Mia focussed on her watch while Pat juggled with the 16 flags up and down until the 3rd match had started. As soon as it had, the length of the course meant that the first match was finishing so it gave those on the committee boat little time to observe the racing before the countdown started all over again.
Out on the ribs, Peter and David were getting soaked from the rain and chilled off from the wind, but their pairs of umpires not only performed their duties with running commentary between themselves, but also made time to explain their rib positioning, commentary and decisions they were making. Each umpire rib had been allocated responsibility for either match, 1, 2 or 3 and throughout the day they would stick with that match position. For example, during match 1, the umpire team of match 2 would act as wing umpire for the main umpire team that were umpiring match 1. The wing umpires role was to stay at all times to the outside of the matched boats whilst calling on the radio the distance between the two boats. 3m clear (between bow and transom), 2m clear, 1m clear e.t.c. Overlapped, overlapped, overlapped, whilst the main umpire team positioned themselves to see if the ‘stay clear’ boat did exactly that and that at all times both boats gave each other room. After all, as emphasised in the briefing to the sailors, match racing is NOT a contact sport. Given the wind speed, the reefed RS21’s were moving at speed as they manoeuvred at close quarters, and to keep constantly in the right position, the umpire boats were dashing around at high speed and in tight circles just with quite a level of skill so as to avoid contact with not only the matched boats, but also the committee boat, marks and 4 other keelboats close to the start area. One other call the wing umpire makes is ‘Blackout’, ‘Blackout’, at times when he’s out of position and therefore can’t provide any information to the main umpire team with regards the overlap status.
When match one crosses the start line, the boat that was the wing umpire in match 1, then becomes the main umpire for match 2 whilst the 3rd main umpire acts as match 2’s wing. Mia and Peter swapped roles later in the day and Mia got the opportunity later in the event to call the overlaps from the wing umpires boat which is no easy task whilst trying to hold on to the speeding rib in choppy conditions whilst keeping eyes firmly fixed on the matched boats. At least the action went some way to help return the circulation as did the hot chocolate that was served up between flights.
By 4pm and just after the last match had crossed the finish line and was heading off to its moorings a, 40 knot gust blasted across the reservoir, 5 minutes earlier and it would have been really interesting as the teams were still flying kites!
After the event and fully reheated, our team left Queen Mary’s with a great deal more knowledge and some experience that will allow them to begin to think about running match racing in our SB20’s. They’ve also made some really important connections amongst the match race officials and sailing teams, all of whom were really friendly and made lots of offers of assistance to help our club get started.
A big thanks to everyone at the Winter Match race 1, for making us feel so welcome.
