Whoever said a few seconds didn't matter?
This was recorded last Sunday at our Springcup and F18 Class event, a lot of tough competition going on (I'm the green spi over at the pin at 0:16).
For those who are interested, here are the F18 Class event results and some pictures from the day before.

I was also there on the A and i can tell you that it was a bit crowdy on that second race finish and i was lucky not to be hit by others. I did not like this type of finishing when you need a radar inyour head to see where everybody is.
The races it self was great and i had a good time.

Cheers,
Hans
A-cat Ned-7

Who'd want to be responsible for scoring that lot correctly?!!!!

I guess that is why the videocam is there.

I see Dart 18's (spi-less), A-cats, F18's and F20's side by side and that leads to one very simple question.

Whatever happened on the water during the race ?

The F20's and Dart 18's are over 20% apart in handicap rating (and real life performance) and should not be able to finish together in a normal race.

So something very weird must have happened with the sailing conditions here. What was it ?


Hey, at 0:53 I see an Alter Cup 2007 Blade F16 finish, number 9, I guess Geert was at this event as well.

Wouter

My guess is that one of the following

1, The wind was very light to start with (so everyone drifted around in one raft) and the the wind piped up just before the finish.
2, The slow boats were lapped and the race officer's nightmare and they all ended up finished on one set
3, Some very ropey fasty boat sailors and some good Dart 18 sailors and they all were in the same area after the course of the race.....

Simon: You guessed wrong <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
Somewhere in the middle of the Big Cats course there is a mark which is the top mark of the Small Cats.
The wind was very variable though, both in strength and direction.

Wouter:
You are right, Geert and Raymond where there as well (So was Macca btw).
Interesting to see how much foreign F18 sailors make there way to Holland, with people from the UK, Belgium, France, and Sweden.
(somehow i cant show the image in this post directly )<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Same set up as Tradewinds in Key Largo Florida.

Ahh, good one.

Race officer's nightmare? Some people's nightmare is other's dream...

That course setup is fairly commonly used here in the US (it's my personal preferred configuration for spin vs. non-spin boats), and results in the "slower" boats getting equal courses to the "faster" boats. The alternative that was used for too many years resulted in the largest class of boats (H16s) starting last and sailing shorter courses. Not good for morale of the biggest class of the event.

But I digress... While the result of this particular race isn't ideal, it is somewhat helpful that the video was running. It would have been more helpful if it stayed focused on the finish mark, as once it turned away, you could identify the boats that had just finished, but now have no record of the order of finish the boats continuing to finish. Distinctions of the boats other than sail numbers could be used to help identify them later, but if you don't have any record of which boat finished when (whether by sail number or otherwise), the video becomes useless for those boats in the later packs.

The best tool to use in this case was unfortunately not present: a mark boat with a race officer calling the line from the pin end. Best practice is to use the boat (anchored) with an orange flag as the mark, with the RO sighting from the flag.

If all else fails, the race doesn't HAVE to be abandoned as a result of this fiasco. As happens when the results blow overboard, sometimes, results need to be re-created after the fact.

The most useful practice that I have heard about (in US SAILING training) is to get all the skippers together onshore and have them physically line up in the order they finished. Believe me, they all know who they finished with, and will sort out any arguments themselves. If two or three can't decide who crossed the line first, call them tied.

The whole group may whine a bit, but it is a far better option for them than abandoning the race. And, if any of them have ever volunteered for this job, they'll appreciate the effort to get it right and keep the race.

Mike

BTW, I think the funniest part of this video might have been the poor soul trying in vain to give each boat a horn as they finished...

Mike

Despite the potential for fouls and carnage, it sounded like everyone was having a good time with it.

Hey Tony,

I looked through the results and noticed that the finish times seemed to be 35 minutes or less. Is that a normal finish target for your races over there? 50-60 minutes is more typical of what we use over here, and might give more time for separation.

Mike

Mike,

it's not a normal finish but the race was shortened to 2 laps because of the lack of wind.
It was very amusing to see that after every start the wind increased considerably, and for what I've experienced is that the boats on the vid (I was one of them) had some advantage of 2 or 3 big gusts.

I really like the 2 laps race in stead of the normal 3 laps. Makes racing much closer (not considering Mischa Heemskerk.....)

There are some fleets that can't START that close together!