paging Todd Hart of Team Cat Fever....your attendance is requested at Spring Fever. There will be a fleet of I20's, 3 are already registered, and Key Sailing (NewKirk and the boys), haven't signed up yet, but they WILL be there. Where are you?

Mary

this is the way to go...Part of the reason why we're given the Statue Race here a new push is just because some email feedback we received after the 2005 event...We listened and modified some elements in our approach.

A generic survey is the way to go...There are probably some free tools out there so that you could conduct them on the internet...

I guess that depends on what your definition of "works" is. If your definition of "Works" means that boats that can't class up normally get a bigger start, then yeah I guess it does work. But, if you can get the numbers without of hodge podge of boats then no it doesn't work.

I very seriously doubt you speak for all the EU and OZ.

Mary,
You might want to take a look at the Skipper's Ballot for the St. Petersburg Trophy. The trophy is for excellence in race management but the form could also serve the organizing authority for regatta feedback.

Regards,
Eric

Thanks, Eric, but that form is used for US Sailing Championship regattas, which are all one-design. Maybe those questions could be a part of the survey, as relates specifically to how well the race committee did their job. But those questions do not address the issues involved in a large, multiple-class regatta with many different sizes and speeds of boats.

Give me a week. I will come up with a draft survey and post it on the forum, and you guys can all chime in and tell me how to improve on it.

The St. Petersburg Trophy is not limited to US Sailing Championship regattas. Any club that puts on a regatta is free to survey the skippers and submit the forms to US Sailing. There's nothing one-design specific about it. Carolina Sailing Club did it for the Governor's Cup (many different classes including monohull and multihull handicap) once.

That said, the trophy is for race management, so the questionaire is all about OA and RC issues (NOR, SI's, courses, signalling, marks, etc.) and not about regatta format. Still, I thought some of the content might be useful.

- Eric

Well, looking at the list of past winners, it seems that the selection committee has only awarded the St. Petersburg Trophy to clubs for running one-design National or North American Championships, so I have to give you something there.

- Eric

Eric, you are right. It does not specify that it has to be a US Sailing Championship. It appears, though, that application for the St. Petersburg Trophy is designed to be submitted by a yacht club or sailing club. I know our club in Ohio was very excited about being a potential prospect for the St. Petersburg Trophy when we hosted the U.S. Multihull Championship there several years ago, and that was the first time I had heard about this award for race management.

Anyway, regardless, it does not address all the issues that multihull sailors seem to be concerned about. I will include those questions and add a bunch of others.

I am signed up to come to the regotta w/ a Tornado. But I have e-mailed the race organizers and put a post on (spring fever) catsailor about who we would be racing with (what fleet), but have not had an answer. I have to travel 700 miles to get to GA, and really don,t what to race with just non spi boats. Any comments would be great!

Matt
P.S.
WHO would we race with?

You will be starting with the I20's and F18s (and F17's I think). That's the way it was done last year.

And if they'd handicap us all so that we knew how we did I might be bringing the 18HT instead of the 4.3. I wouldn't care that the F18s would also be scored one-design. I'd just like to be seeing how I was doing against them.

Sorry to be so late in entering this discussion. Let me attempt to clarify a couple of points.

I don't believe that we have ever discouraged suggestions either before or after the regatta and I've tried to answer the very few that I can even remember.

Jamie, and others, we are going to discuss your suggestions pertaining to sailing under a handicap system this coming weekend at the Bare What you Dare regatta. As you know, we used large open classes when we first started the regatta in 1998 and for several years when we were having 100-170 boats. This was very difficult on the race committee as I was unwilling to put my $5000 laptop out on the committee boat, sometimes in the rain, to calculate the scores and we had to do it on shore after the races. With fewer boats, this is not only much easier but can be done on a cheap laptop by the race committee out on the water between races. I'm pretty sure the race committee will seriously look at your request and I'm sure that Nigel and I will go along with whatever they decide. I'm not opposed to having awards for classes of 5 boats or more with additional awards for their finishing positions in the Portsmouth fleets. How many other regattas do you have the chance for 2 first place awards?

For those who attended the two years when the lake was way down, the red mud just couldn't be helped but the lake is near full pool again and we haven't had that problem for the last couple of years.

As far as traveling long distances, last year Rick & Mary showed up and if memory serves me correctly they only had to drive up here - they "floated" all the way home.

On the Spring Fever on-line Preregistration form, there is a space for comments. I read every one of those and either answer or pass them on to the race committee to be sure you are being heard.

I'm sorry I can't guarantee wind and weather conditions but over the years, we've had a mixture of just about everything but due to the three day venue, we have nearly always managed to get is some good racing.

Have specific comments - feel free to email me at: Mr.Ernie@TwinHulls.com

Ernie,
Why would you take a computer out on the committee boat? Isn't it easier to call the results in to somebody on shore after each race? That way everything will be computed and printed before the committee boat even hits the dock. (And the computer won't get wet. )

As strange as it may sound, up until Verizon recently installed a tower near by, there was very poor telephone reception anywhere in the areas that we race. Even the ship-to-shore radios we use are iffy getting to my house as an example. Two years ago we tried the ship-to-shore route and it didn't work well so last year they did the scoring on the committee boat and it worked much better.

Mr Ernie,

I've got a "waterproof" toughbook laptop, that I will be glad to loan to the RC. I'll even ship it up early so you can start loading the software, fleets, etc.

Mike

Anyone have any recommendations for scoring software? As I wrote what we used 6-8 years ago, and, it is written for the Mac, I'm sure there is something better available out there. I can probably convert this but am quickly running out of time.

Mr. Ernie,

I too will be at Bare What You Dare this weekend and am looking forward to the conversation. For the benefit of the discussion here on this forum, here is my perspective; I believe that having larger open fleets combined with some cross scoring may help increase participation and enjoyment by those that are happy racing in two to four boat fleets. I'll be glad to help with the scoring tasks too (I'm a bit of a computer junkie). However, I joined the large F18 fleet to race one-design and I don't have much interest in cross-handicap scoring or even sharing a start line with boats of a different class if it can be avoided. There is also some F18 class requirements for regional championships to keep in mind too - but I'm certain you guys are well aware of all that.

Mary, if you put together that Questionaire, I'll be glad to pass it out and also try to get it up on-line when I post the scores and pictures. If I can get it on-line, I think we would be more apt to get better thought out responses. If a skipper is ashamed to put his name on it, it probably isn't worth considering anyway.

May I ask why? I'm not being critical, I just would like to understand everyone's point of view.

Thanks.

MisterErnie, check out Sailwave.

http://www.sailwave.com/