April Folly

Talking of poor race management, I give no apologies for republishing this post originally written by me as an article for our club newsletter one April a few years back. I guess most readers quickly recognized it as a spoof and thought they were so smart for spotting my April Fools joke. But if they thought I had made it all up the joke was on them because every outrage described in the article actually happened. And they were all perpetrated by the same race officer in one single evening of Wednesday night racing.

All members scheduled to serve as race committee on Wednesday nights should become familiar with the following guidelines.

1. Fishermen at our lake have a boring life. All they do is stare at the water. Try to make their life more interesting by setting the start line between some anchored fishing boats. Fishermen love to watch the boats sailing nearby and to chat to the sailors.

2. In light winds, make sure you set very, very long courses. If you don't, you'll only have to run more races making for unnecessary work.

3. Most sailors hate to tack. Try and set the first leg of the course so that they can reach the first mark without tacking.

4. Most sailors find it really hard to work out which is the upwind end of the start line. Help them out by setting a start line so that they have to beat to get to one end. Then it is so much easier for the sailors to identify the favored end.

5. Start sequences can be very boring for the sailors. Try livening things up by stopping a 3-minute sequence at any time and restarting it without warning. Another option is to make the 2-minute and 1-minute signals at some random interval after the 3 minute signal. This keeps the sailors on their toes.

6. Don't bother to call any boats that are over the start line. It's not really your job. Alternatively call out a few sail numbers that are over and add "and those other boats that I can't see". Keeps everyone guessing and that is a lot of fun for everyone.

7. Liven up the first leg by driving the committee boat up to the windward mark, and then when everyone is halfway up the beat and spread out on both side of the course, pick up the mark and move it. This is really exciting for the sailors who guessed wrong about where you were going to drop the mark.

8. Have a good rest while the sailors are racing. You have earned it. Chat to the sailors that showed up late for the race. Don't bother to watch the racers. The first boat will always give you a shout when he or she is about to finish.

9. Set a really long finish line. Don't worry if it is so long that you can't read the sail numbers at the other end of the line. You can always ask the sailors to shout out their numbers when they know they have crossed the line.

10. If you get bored, you can always shorten the course. To do this, drive over to the mark that the sailors are approaching and put it in the committee boat. Let the racers guess how they are supposed to finish. Makes them think - which is good for them.

11. If any guests or potential new fleet members show up to race, remind them that the races are for members only and that they should keep clear of the racecourse. This is especially important if the newcomers are juniors, because kids need to be put in their place.

12. If any of the anchors on the buoys look old or dirty, just untie the line and dump the anchors in the reservoir. The rear commodore will be delighted to supply new ones.

13. Set the course as far away from the club launching area as possible. You can usually rely on the wind to die later in the evening, and the sailors really appreciate the chance to practice their light air skills on a long sail back to the beach in the dark.

14. Remember when you are race officer, you are always right. Do not be distracted by advice and comments from any of the sailors. If a sailor persists in telling you how to do your job, it is OK to teach him or her some new nautical terms that may not be in the dictionary.

15. Please make sure that these new race officer procedures are used for all races on or after April 1st 2003.

Happy Sailing!

Aaaah -- Sunfish racing -- so much fun -- Lasers are so serious by comparison.

T E A S

A great story from Chris Jordan for our group writing project on Top Race-Committee Screw-ups...

I know we are not going to get a good race, when the Race Officer stands on the front of our committee boat, with his arm outstretched, holding a burgee in order to check the wind direction before setting the pin end of the line.... and then gets the rescue boat to drop the pin end just where the burgee is pointing: i.e. straight into the wind!

Or when, with an 11:00 start scheduled, the Race Officer leaves the club house at 10:45, and still has to: walk to the committee boat (2 mins), remember the keys (1 min)and how to start it, motor out to the start area (5 mins), decide where to anchor (2 mins), anchor by lowering the anchor to the bottom and fastening off the chain at that point (1 min), lift the anchor as its drifting (2 mins), re-anchor with enough chain (2 mins), plan for the pin end (1 min), get the rescue boat to place the pin end (2 mins), and then plns and sets the course (2 mins) and then starts the sequence.... and wonders why the competitors all look fed up.

One of the better decisions was when the Race Officer shortened the race to: the first across the start line! The wind had dropped, and the tide was keeping everyone back, and it took about 45 mins for the first boat to start / finish.

My mate got disqualified for outside assistance: Very strong winds, racing in a dinghy. They were the only ones to stay upright and crossed the finish line after about an hour (and at least 20 minutes ahead of the next boat). Looking at the club-house, there was clearly a shorten course (S) flag flying, along with their class flag (E) and a couple of others. They didn't get a finish hooter. They landed, asked what was going on, and were told there was one more lap to do. They jumped back into their boat and did another lap. They were still in the lead, but didn't get a finish. They were told that as someone had held their boat while they raced ashore, and were disqualified for outside assistance. The flags? Behind the club-house was a small cafe selling teas and cakes, and were advertising this with flags: T E A S.

And the complete lack of sensibility in a Race Officer? My daughter, at the age of 16, was the only person out of a fleet of 25 adults who were all doing the week long regatta to venture out in her race, when it was gusting force 7 at the start. She sailed round the course, capsizing 2 or 3 times, but completing 3 laps very successfully, and got a hooter after 3 laps to indicate she had finished. But the next day she noticed no result had been posted. On enquiring she was told, "we never count races that have only one boat entered". WHY? 25 boats were in the week regatta? She could have been finished at any time before the 3 laps? We have never been back there again.


Cheers,

Chris

Boats now: RS-400, RS-Vareo.
Boats past: Cadet, 420, Enterprise, Fireball, Laser.

Sweeps

The America's Cup is fundamentally a very boring event.

Did you know that in the last seventy years spanning sixteen America's Cup regattas, there has only been one occasion on which the losing boat won more than one race? That was the time when Dennis Conner won three races against Australia ll but still managed to lose the Cup. Eleven of the other fifteen America's Cup finals since 1937 were sweeps with the loser failing to win even one single race in what was usually a best of seven series.

No wonder it is tough to persuade the general public that the America's Cup is exciting. But this year things are different. With Alinghi's win yesterday tying up the series at 2-2, it is now certain that even the losing team will have won at least two races.

Aren't you just pumped up about that? Doesn't it make you want to jump on a plane to Valencia right now? Or at the very least subscribe to the Versus channel?

No? Oh well. I guess you could go and watch some paint dry.

The views, conclusions, findings and opinions expressed here may or may not be the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Laser Class Association, the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Her Majesty's Government, or America's Cup Management. The opinions expressed here represent the views of 0.000017% of Versus subscribers and do not necessarily represent the views of the other 99.999983% of subscribers, Comcast Corporation or its subsidiaries. You should check with them if you really care what they think. New readers to this blog are advised that Tillerman does not always say what he means or even know what he means, or know what he says, or ... Wait. Where was I? Where am I? Oh yes. You are advised that Tillerman reserves the right to write the opposite of what he really means in order to provoke some comments even supposing he knows what he thinks in the first place.

Race Committee Mistakes

Four responses so far to my request for stories of race committee mistakes. Still plenty of time to add your stories to the list. Full details of how to participate at Top Race Committee Screw-ups.

The RC is Always Right from M Squared.

Miller Genuine Draft by Carol Anne from Five O'Clock Somewhere.

No Foul by jsw225.

Sex Change Operation by me.

There must be more stories. Keep 'em coming.

Miller Genuine Draft

Response by Carol Anne of Five O'Clock Somewhere to my request for stories of Race Committee Screw-ups (originally written as a comment and reposted here so I can link to it).

There was the time a committee boat was a big boat with a little anchor, and the wind was stiff, the the boat dragged its anchor way downwind between the start and the finish of a race, while the guy on the committee boat didn't notice anything wrong. By the end of the race, the committee boat was a half-mile from the pin, and because of the stiff winds, there were enough waves on the lake that the pin was invisible to boats trying to finish the race. They just all sailed toward the committee boat, and passed the committee boat based on the relative position that the boat and the pin had had at the beginning of the race. The race committee guy's comment at the end of the day: "I didn't realize that the pin was drifting so much."

Then there have been guys who decide to run something other than a strict upwind-downwind course, which are what the sailors are used to and which are supposed to provide more tactical competition -- reaching legs, in general, aren't good tests of tactics or seamanship. In particular, there was one guy who called a Harry Morgan course (two triangles and an upwind-downwind final lap) on an extremely light-air day. Some of the slower boats in the fleet would have been out past sunset, except that they all quit.

Then there was the mostly cruising sailor who clocked the finish when the last part of the boat cleared the line, rather than the first -- he was another one who called triangular courses rather than strictly upwind-downwind. His decisions were strongly influenced by Miller Genuine Draft.

No Foul

Response by jsw225 to my request for stories of Race Committee Screw-ups (originally written as a comment and reposted here so I can link to it).

My biggest error as a race committee was starting a race just as the wind was turning to the left. I didn't expect it to turn so hard. Half way through the race it settled at roughly 90degrees to the left and the wind died by half. Most people knew that it wasn't my fault, but that didn't stop them from teasing me.


The worst foul committed against me was by a Jury Boat during my match racing. Before this "Foul" my team and a conference rival had traded the lead 4-5 times. Around the last windward mark, they got a little bit ahead. We knew we sailed better downwind, and we weren't more then 2-3 boat lengths behind. Unfortunately, I cut the lay line too short. I poked the bow up and just BARELY cleared the mark. I missed by about 2-3 inches. However, the jury boat was on the opposite side, and saw the buoy move with us being very close. So they called a foul on us.

It was a perfectly understandable call. However, since we were up against a conference football rival, and it was so close of a race, we were very angry at the call. Especially since you couldn't challenge a Jury Boat's call.

Sex Change Operation

One of my most embarrassing moments as a sailing event organizer happened when I was the regatta chairman (not on the race committee as required by the group writing project on Top Race Committee Screwups but hey, it's my project, I make the rules, and I can break them).

Where was I? Where am I? Oh yes.

I had volunteered to host a Sunfish Regional Championship at my sailing club in New Jersey. In the world of Sunfish sailing, Regionals are a pretty big deal. They are the highest level of open event below the North Americans, the winner of each Regional qualifies to sail in the Sunfish World Championship, and the events are usually written up in the class newsletter the Windward Leg. I knew already that at least one former Sunfish World Champion and at least one former Sunfish North American Champion, plus a sprinkling of national champions from other classes, plus all the local New Jersey hotshots would be coming to the event. So I wanted to do a good job. I did not want to screw-up.

I persuaded the best people I knew in the club who sailed other classes to be on the race committee so I could sail in the Regional myself. I used every method I could think of to publish news of the regatta and ensure a large entry. I wrote the Notice of Race and Sailing Instructions and agreed them with the PRO. I set up the paperwork for registration and arranged some volunteers to handle that on the day. I bought some really cool trophies. I was working hard to ensure that this would be a quality event.

What else? Oh yes, food and drink. Very important.

I made all the arrangements to make sure that the sailors would be well fed and watered before, during and after sailing. As part of this I decided that I would break from the usual tradition of sandwiches and chips for lunch and treat the Sunfish sailors like the finely tuned athletes that they imagined themselves to be (and some are). So for lunch one day I would give them energy bars and fruit and a sports drink. I went down to the local supermarket and grabbed a random selection of dozens of energy bars including my favorite Clif Bars. I was all set.

On the first day of the regatta we handed out bags of my healthy fitness lunches to the sailors on the water between races. The fleet dispersed from the committee boat and the sailors settled down to open the bags and enjoy their lunches.

Then I started to hear howls of complaint from all over the fleet. It seemed that some of the male sailors had problems with the contents of their bags...

"What's this?"

"I'm not eating this."

"What are you trying to do to me?"

I sailed over to find out what the problem was. It turned out that in my haste to grab energy bars in the shop I had accidentally bought a batch of Luna Bars which are marketed as "the whole nutrition bar for women". And of course most of the Luna Bars had been given to male sailors. Oops.

The men thought that one bite of this girlie food was going to play havoc with their hormones. They imagined all sorts of terrible side-effects including facial hair loss, higher voices, growing breasts... or shrinking of vital parts of the male anatomy. I never heard the end of it.

But in my defence I would like to point out that a certain sailor did not eat his Luna Bar for Saturday lunch and had a fairly mediocre score at the end of the day by his standards. But then he did eat the female dietary supplement before sailing on Sunday... and went on to win the regatta.

Way to go Chris! Sorry about those side-effects.

The Origins of Language

Yikes. What have I done?

In a comment to my post on Mommy Boats, Edward from EVK4 Bloglet said that he hoped that the phrase Mommy Boats would get into the everyday lexicon as it should shame a few dads and coaches from driving Mommy Boats. While agreeing with his sentiment I laughed at the idea that it would catch on.

Then today on M Squared in a post entitled Little League Sailing, the author writes: "When kids race solo ... they're sometimes followed around the course... by a parent. Such support boats are often referred to as Mommy Boats." My emphasis.

Often? What's going on here? I don't remember hearing the phrase "Mommy Boats" before I invented it in a burst of sarcastic indignation a few days ago. Can it be that it has been used before? Let's see what Google can find.

Hmmm only a handful of hits for the exact phrase.

One is for the use of the phrase, "Look Mommy, boats!" Not at all the same thing.

One is for a forum where someone asked the question, "Where do boats come from?" and got the answer, "Mommy boats get together with Daddy boats, then baby boats come out." Ha ha.

Pursuing that theme further, one is for a site that if I linked to it or just repeated some of the words on it, my coveted PG rating would be downgraded immediately. I don't even want to know exactly what Mommy and a boat were doing to each other in this context.

One is the original post on Proper Course.

One is the M Squared post linking to Proper Course that says the phrase is "often" used.

And all the others seem to be sailing news sites, or social bookmarking sites, or blog scrapers, that link to or copied the material from Proper Course. So if a phrase falls in the forest and Google's not around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Where was I? Where am I? Oh yes.

So is this is how new language usage starts? Someone uses a phrase. A dozen people repeat it. Someone assumes that the phrase is in current usage. Somehow the myth that it's in common use gets on to the web. And the rest is history.

What have I done? Someone please tell me it ain't so.

Top Race Committee Screw-ups

Running the race committee for a large sailing event is a major challenge to the Principal Race Officer's organizational, communication, race management and leadership skills. I know from my own experience that when I have succeeded in running an (almost) flawless regatta it can be an amazingly satisfying achievement. In the days leading up to a regatta when I am in charge of the race committee I always find myself trying to anticipate what could go wrong, and then making the necessary plans to avoid each potential blunder. On the other hand, I don't always succeed. And it's the errors and mistakes that I never thought of in advance that come back to haunt me...

So in the spirit of our previous group writing project on Worst Sailing Mistakes, I propose a similar event on Worst Race Committee Mistakes.

Same basic format as before...

1. Write a post on your blog about the worst mistake you have seen made by a race committee (or made yourself as a race officer). The idea is for us to create a collection of RC screw-ups that will serve as terrible warnings to future race committees. After all, the best way to learn is from other people's mistakes.

2. Once you've posted your story, let me know about it by sending an email to tillermeister@gmail.com including a link to your post. Please let me know about your post before Saturday 30 June. Or if you don't have a blog just email me the story and I will post it here.

3. I will post two links to your story. During this week I will write a number of posts listing any new stories. Then at the end of the week I will provide a summary post with links to all of your embarrassing RC stories.

In the spirit of the event I will write two posts myself on the topic: one describing a couple of my own embarrassing moments as a PRO, and one listing an uncharacteristic mistake made by the RC at the Laser North Americans the weekend before last.

Go for it. Now is the time to expose your own biggest errors; or to have your revenge on that race committee that messed up what would have been your perfect race. If you want you can leave out the names to protect the guilty parties.

Rocket

How old do you need to be before you can no longer sail a Laser? I hope I have a good few years left in me before I have to hang up my hiking boots. It was certainly inspiring to see some Great Grandmasters considerably older than me sailing in the Radial fleet at the Laser North Americans last week.

But some athletes never seem to know when to retire. Such as...