Right, we actually have a trophy for this series this year, what are your thoughts on venues and numbers of events.

Last year was a bit defunct for a number of reasons, I don't think the choice of venues was the best and we had few entries for the latter events.

Personally I think using the Piers rac is not a good idea, there are 2 races which split the boats and most people don't bother with the Saturday.

Also I will ry and do a better job of posting the results.

My initial thoughts are

5 events 3 to count.

Scoring as per last year

events could be

Mumbles for the Nations cup in May
An event held at our place in June, ( boats can be left here)

We could do one at Weymouth in early July
Datchet in September
Grafham in October although with the single handed champs this can split the fleet
Another good one would be Stokes Bay in September
Also Alan offered to do one at Mersea Island

What are your thoughts?

John

Agree ECPR might not be a good one as some prefer the long course and some the short - also if the forcast is light, I might sail with all the sails and go for it on the long course!

Grafham for a similar reason re the Single handed Champs

Do we want to go to places where there are established fleets (so Datchet) or where we don't have fleets and perhaps we want to publicise the F16 ?

It looks like I will be going to Rutland this year as it fits in with other plans. Hopeing to get down to Mumbles for the nations cup (but not certain).

Datchet is close and there are plenty of boats there, but like sailing in a bowl of concreate being showered by Av-gaz.

What's the sailing like at Mersea ? Sailed out of Brightlingsea a few times.

What is the proposed date for going to Weymouth ? School Holidays start the last week (or so) in July....

I'd probably be limited to the ones that are clustered around the Southeast plus Mumbles.

It would also be good to encourage prople to go to Marconi for the ECPR as it is usually a fantastic weekend !

And we all need to go to Grafham for the end-of-season bash <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I'm time poor so I'll make best efforts to travel to the more local ones (plus Marconi and Rutland) but long distance weekends don't really work for me.

It would be good to get some boats to Rutland as there are no F16s (that I am aware of) there.

All those venues look good to me, although perhaps we should try to get some more Easterly events in? If Alan and Jan can organise something at their club that'd at least spread things out a bit.

I don't know if any of the F16 sailors on the continent can be tempted to make the journey, but having Mumbles and an event at yours close to each other can only make the journey more worthwhile.

I'd agree with dropping ECPR from the scoring. Grafham's a tricky one, but on balance I think we should score the single handers event as a TT result. If it's anything like this year, sailing in the handicap fleet just isn't worth it, so I'd expect to see only 1-up F16s there anyway.

I would suggest a slight change to the scoring system: rather than having Mumbles be worth double points, have it scored as two races with the same results. i.e. winning it gives you two 1sts. You can then discard one or both of your results from Mumbles if you do better elsewhere. As it stands, the Mumbles results are effectively undiscardable (a 5th at Mumbles is worth more than a 1st elsewhere), but the event accounts for 50% of the points available in the series. Scoring Mumbles as two separate races should hopefully keep the TT scoring interesting up to the end of the season.

Paul

Good point Paul, also means that people who don't make Mumbles (or do badly) have more of a chance.

Perhaps make Mumbles double and add one other in so that it becomes 7 with 4 to count.

In no order....

Mumbles (2 results)
Grafham
Datchet
Weymouth
Mersea
John's place

Scooby any chance you could talk to the powers to be at Grafham and see if there would be any chance that the twin hander F16 could start in amongst the single handed fleet, to keep the F16 group together, it was a bit tough on Allan and Paul to have to exclude their better halves and it would make no odds to the starters and scorers as we run off the same handicap.

Still fancy the idea of taking over a beach for a weekend rather than be completely reliant on a sailing club, bit of a laugh and really be great fun to just use local amenites.

Personally, I'd still sail 1-up at Grafham even given the option of sailing 2-up. I think the singlehanders event is a great idea, and great promotion for the F16s. I managed a couple of 4ths in that fleet which I was really pleased with and I want to do better next year <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

So, we can argue about whether Grafham counts for TT points, but I don't think we should ask for 2-up boats on that start.

This year was a bit awkward only because Ann and I had planned to sail 2-up, but next year we'll plan for me to singlehand.

Paul

Nations Cup, draft Flyer. PM me if you would be prepared to stick one up on your Club notice board etc

For the Flyer I think we should have a contact no and / or Email address for people to get info from. If you want / need a spare email address to dedicate to the event, I can set one up (and forward on to someone) I can set up a ?@ntlworld.com or ?@letshaveachat.com and then just forward it on to someone no problem.

As for Grafham and the 2 up F16's starting with the single handed fleet, IMO that is a non starter, but I'll see what James Carrier thinks who is the Fast cat fleet captain.

Re; Nations Cup you're quite right Scooby and I'll amend accordingly. Also, those of you who stayed at the Carlton Hotel during this years event may remember the lovely Rebecca!! Well last Friday I bumped into her and we got talking about discounts for next years event. So the good news is that big discounts are available so please make your reservations prior to the end of February and make sure you mention that you are attending a Regatta at Mumbles YC

Contact details for the Carlton?, and is it "walking" distance, and is there secure parking ?

Contact details are on:

http://www.mumblesyachtclub.co.uk/home_visitor.php

or Google "cartlon hotel mumbles". It's about 5 minutes walk from the club. Parking: you can park in the pay and display by the hotel, or the pay and display by the club. I think it's £3/day or thereabouts.

Paul

OK. Made contact with them. Where can we park trailers etc ?

Looks like I am now 99.999999999999999999999999% certain for this (single handed and without the family), however, Zandvoort has bit the dust as I just cannot find the time to get out there as I have other commitments close by (people just choose the most crap times to get married !!!!).

Right, planning to come down on the Wednesday the 9th (it's a Looooooooooog drive), will I be able to get the boat parked at the club somewhere and maybe get a sail or 2 in Wednesday / Thurday ? Planning to leave Monday AM, so post championship curry anyone ?

Hi Simon
There shouldn't be any problems with the boat we'll just have to speak nicely to the Council boys who look after the Knab Rock Boat/Car park. As for sailing Steve, Colin or Myself should be keen to go out for a blast in the warm up to the Champs.

If others are about, I could definitely be tempted to come down on the Wednesday evening. Would come down after work and have the boat rigged for a Thursday sail.

Unless anyone objects, I'll be 1-up on the Friday and 2-up on Saturday/Sunday (it's term-time...). Is there anything in the rules about changing crew mid-event?

Paul

Colin and I have discussed this issue at length over numerous beers and decided it wouldn't be in the current F16 ethos if we prevented people changing from solo too two up during an event. However, it does seem reasonable to declare the changes well prior to the event as in this instance so crews aren't just dumped on the shore due to light conditions or vice versa you take a crew on because the wind has increased.

I think if declared well in advance (say +1 month) so there can be no real posibility of a weather forcast being used then I would be OK with this, but if people were to make these decisions a few days in advance, or so I would have a problem with this. Problem is that IF we were to allow this we would need to write the SSI's in such a way as to ALLOW it. There is a change of crew going on, and this needs to be allowed by the PRO, SSI's etc and they need to be documented, standard SSI's do not allow a change of crew except in exceptional circumstances. Perhaps on the entry form there needs to be a "On entries RECEIVED up to 1st April 2007, you may declare Who (and not just helm+crew or helm) will be sailing the boat on which days. This will be BINDING."

If thiink the idea has merit, but the implementation must be cast iron.

I agree that it should be declared in advance so that you can't play to the conditions. I also think that it's very much in the spirit of F16. If this was F18, I'd be stuffed because Ann simply can't get that Friday off (I always understood that teachers could just throw sickies for this kind of thing, but apparently not...) Sailing F16 means sailing more.

Of course, with most events not requiring pre-registration, you're always free to dump/gain a crew up till the day of the event, provided that you stick with the decision for the rest of the event.

Paul

Yes, I think you're right here too Paul. As for making Rules at present I don't think we need put anything in writing, lets just keep it an un-written rule as this would appear to be a lot more friendly and if people are prepared to take advantage then I'm sure a few quite words over a beer could resolve the issue.

Hotel (carlton) booked from the 9th to the 13th so if anyone else fancies a sail Weds / Thurs then lets sort something out.

What do I need to do regarding early boat parking etc ?