Race Officer & Skippers' Briefing

• We plan a full schedule of racing Tuesdays and Saturdays.
• We expect all the village regattas to run this year.
• SWYTC will be used for pursuits and generally in the harbour. If you haven’t got one the club may issue one but it should be assumed that it won’t be advantageous. IRC remains the primary handicap system in the club.
• Additional courses have been added to the Committee Boat list and some have been renumbered. Saturday courses remain the same. Special thanks go to Paul Pullen at Mylor Chandlery who has laminated the course lists for you.
• Boats that race Tuesday and Friday will be using the same course list and numbers with both Clubs.
• We hope that Trefusis mark will be placed further South. It's as far out from the headland as the pilots will allow us.
• Westerly courses will use the gate as the first mark. Sailed in the normal direction.
• We have tried to make some longer courses for the faster boats and give some further options if the proposed sports boat group takes off. Sports boats may request a class start on Saturdays. We have left this option open by adding a start to the end of our sequence.
• Cockwell’s Tuesday Pursuits are clubhouse starts – one round of Saturday courses or RO choice.
• Start times for Pursuit races will be given to entered boats. No entry – no result. Entries need to be in at least 48 hours before the first race. The caveat is if you have sent in an entry and paid and are not on the list then please flag it up. Tightening up our entry system is on the to do list.
• Easterly courses 304, 306, 307, 313 – have an error where you don’t actually have to round Castle or Black Rock buoy. It doesn’t make the course dangerous but does give options as to the route sailed. The mistake is made because different classes may be using the same buoy and everyone needs to round it the same way. However, if you are the RO that wants to use these courses you can choose to amend them, or not, on the day.
• There is an RO folder of information and info on the web site. It’s a good idea to look at the forecast and have an idea of which courses you might use before arriving at the club. Risk assessments are also on the web site. You should plan to be at the club early give yourself time to not be hassled. If you need help there are several people on both the Committee Boat and in the Race Office who can help you.
• On your RO duty day you should remain on duty for 1 hour after the last boat finishes, in case of protests.
• M class will phone in their results and will self-finish on the gate. If they race on Saturdays they will start 5 minutes before B class by Committee Boat.
• Series discards have been increased. We expect that many will want to go on holiday this year and this allows a race or two to be missed without penalty.
• We have deleted the exclusion zone around commercial vessels. But Rule 2e will be enforced. Having a defined distance doesn’t work as sometimes there isn’t enough room. But as we use the gate it keeps boats towards the Flushing side anyway which solves most of the problems.
• We will continue to run the launch on Fridays and the club will be open with food.
• Crew/Students. The club would like to encourage a younger element into the club. We propose to establish a FSC Crew WhatsApp. This will be two-way. You can post looking for crew on a particular day and available people can post looking to crew. We want to encourage participation. So Skippers are encouraged to take people with them even if only as passengers.
• We also have in mind a student/‌crew sailing day(s) where we can take several youngsters/‌students and give them an experience under less pressure than an actual race. Probably we need to watch the weather, get some volunteers and announce it on the WhatsApp.
• Class reps. – we are having a meeting after this one. But we haven’t engaged well with the classes over the last two years. Probably because we were just grateful to be sailing at all. Now we want to give the classes more profile and encourage more boats to join. All ideas welcome.

John Hicks, Sailing Secretary