BJsailor,

Thanks for explaining the process surrounding the decision to cancel racing on Friday. Of course, some (many?) competitors questioned the decision, so it is helpful to know more about how the decision was reached.

I'm sure competitors will continue to question the decision, but it's a done deal, so there isn't anything to do about it now (except debate it here on Catsailor :-).

To me it still feels like the decision was premature. As you said, the wind was diminishing throughout the morning and was under the max allowable speed at least by noon, if not by sometime between 1000 and 1130. And you noted that "1230 was discussed as the cut-off time to lower the AP" so that a race could be started before 2 pm. Thus, it is quite reasonable that people continue to wonder why racing was canceled at 1100 instead of waiting at least until 1230 or so.

I agree that in addition to the wind speed, the sea state should also be considered when evaluating whether to race, and I grant that I was not 1.5 nm offshore at 1100 on Friday in a position to evaluate for myself whether to race or not. However, safety is not a concern only for the RC. A-class sailors are not fools, and they take safety seriously. For example, on the last day of the January 2007 midwinters only 17 of 65 competitors went out to race because the conditions appeared windy from shore, but they turned out to be fine on the water. There were no breakdowns that required assistance from the safety boats and some of the best racing of the week occurred on that day. Thus, prior experience supports the conclusion that A-Class sailors themselves are quite responsible when it comes to safety.

It's likely that if a race had been held on the last day of the Worlds that many sailors would have decided not to participate, in which case only the best seamen from among the 98 best A-Class sailors in the world would have been on the water, and the ratio of safety boats to competitors would have been even higher than the 1:15 required by the A-Class championship rules. Given that, speculation by the Organizing Authority about “almost certain carnage” that would have resulted is debatable at best.

You stated that rather than questioning the decision to cancel racing I should thank the Organizing Authority for running a stellar event. I did thank the Organizing Authority for running an excellent event, and I thank them again here. They did a good job. However, the purpose of my post was to answer a query about how the decision to cancel racing at 1100 on Friday was received by the competitors, and it say that it was not embraced universally. It was a debatable call, and Catsailor is a useful forum to debate it.

While I understand your position about the decision to cancel the racing, I take exception to the last sentence of your post where you insinuate that it is bad form for me to report how the decision was received by the competitors. Although “safety” and “security” are sometimes invoked these days by governing authorities to squelch debate, I hope that attitude has not reached sailboat racing, and that open debate, constuctive criticism, and feedback from the comeptitors will be encouraged, so that the best events possible can be run.