Originally Posted by brucat
I wasn't at this event, and only know a few of the people involved, but the RC-bashing really needs to stop.


The only thing the RC is being "bashed" for is for moving a Portsmouth boat out of the Portsmouth fleet and into the F-18 start.

Whose decision was that? Only the RC can make/made that decision, and it was a bad decision. It's a fair criticism.



Originally Posted by brucat

While there are some things an RC can do, the reality is that once everyone is on the water, classes will get mixed on the course and need to sail per the RRS.


No one is arguing that the RRS's don't need to be followed - and interestingly, only Pepin and Scooby-Simon, a couple of fellow cat sailors who were not at this regatta, are claiming that there was intentional violation of the RRS against Mike.

While the RC cannot keep boats from different classes from encountering each other on the water - they can act to minimize these encounters by working with course selection, starts and division breaks. In the case of the Santa Barbara regatta the RC could have avoided many of these issues simply by not taking the T out of it's fleet and putting in the same start as the F-18s.

I don't see this thread or my posts as RC bashing. I see it merely as a discussion of a situation best taken under consideration next time a similar decision is being made. In the Santa Barbara case, the decision to move the T to the F-18 start was made by the RC at the skippers meeting before racing started.

Mark raises an interesting question about the H20. I was concerned when the T was taken out of the Portsmouth fleet leaving the 20 with no one to sail against. However, I didn't have the opportunity to ask him directly if this affected his perception of the regatta.

Last edited by chrisun; 08/26/09 10:52 AM.

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