In the back of our fixtures booklet - circulated to all members every spring - there are two pages of guidelines for running events.
I am sure you are all familiar with them as they are also on this website.
The committee are considering deleting number 4.2
It has been widely flouted recently at the Looe Championship and Shoreham Silver Tiller in particular.
Does anyone have any views on this?

Hi Pat
Yes, just one thing, that trapeziod courses in a swinging breeze when sharing with another fleet does not work and for the sake of keeping a fleet aflaot for another 30 minutes to get good courses, should be worth it especially as was the case at Shoreham where there was strong tide and wind shifts up to roughly 20°. 
On another note, did anyone plot the angles by GPS at Looe as it did look like the angel was 90° most if not all of the time. Personally, I'd like them tighter.
BFN
Barnsie

I have a picture in my mind of the Looe champs conditions with tighter reaches. I don't think it's very pretty!

I can't speak for Shoreham becasue i didn't go, but at Looe i do recall one at least one race where a shift made the first reach very broad and the second one very tight, two sail tight. There is not a lot we can do about this, apart from move the mark of course (I think Roger did?). Tighter reaches will potentially make this worse, the first one will be tighter but still kiteable, but the second will be even more of a hard nothing slog. Personally i found the champs to be enough of a physical test as did many others I suspsect!

I think for ST Meetings we perhaps need to get the fleet reps to be more proactive in keeping the PRO informed of what the class wants. How many of our ST PROs have links to the class and have read the guide?

Sleep soundly folks  - already decided that the Shoreham course next year will be triangle  , run ,triangle with a finish at the leeward mark to enable the first fleet to start the second race race without waiting for the second fleet ( Phantoms I believe ) to finish .

It's a guideline and a good one.  What is the thinking behind deleting it?

The only times I have travelled to Shoreham racing has been cancelled so cannot comment, but at Looe we were sailing at the heavy end of the weight scale in a boat with a lovely fat transom and I really enjoyed the reaches.  On the last triangle of the last race we dropped the kite at the gybe mark as had everyone in front but half way down the reach we realised we had been overcautious and hoisted with no problem laying the mark.  We had I think dropped early on the previous triangle.  It hadn't occurred to me that the reaches were too tight, just a tad windy and rough.

Tighten up the reaches and help the heavyweights then, fairer all round.

And how does that help the light weights and smaller female crews exactly?

Looking at the Top 20 crew weights in the latest mag the average was about 23.5 stone I think. That is I'm sure heavier than many people would have guessed.

I enjoy a good blast (refer to pics of me out on Sunday at the Shoreham open), but agree a handful of reaches at the champs were a bit tight. Dave and I only weigh about 22 stone, but have relative youth and experience of sailing on the sea on our side. But should it all be about power, rather than mixture of skill too.

Pat made a very interesting comment to me at the Champs. It can be far more tactical to sail well on a broader reach than a tight one where many boats are just hanging on for dear life. For example you have the choice of going high or low. Do people agree with this......?

I do.

I actually like runs for the same reason especially if the beats go one sided. Broad reaches and runs are the only tactical legs on the course, and often the only way to get past people.

So do I.

Firmly in the lower quartile of the fleet at the Nationals, the combination of tight reaches and "heavy" conditions replace tactical considerations with pure survival.

To be purely selfish, as we're well below the average crew weight at the Nationals, in light conditions we've no objection to 2-sail reaches!  

what about the occasional windward-leeward course?

I think the angle of the course is largely irrelevant these days - if one reach is tighter then the other is broader. It's only an issue if the lighter ones cannot physically make the mark.

Regardless of the angle of the course these days and how broad the reach would be 'as the crow flies', my observation would be the column go off as high as they can anyway all luffing each other (slowing themselves down & in-fighting) and let the leaders get away whilst sailing in a bloody great arc! It happens time and time again - a couple of boats get to the windward mark first and sail off in clear air. Then the pack go round and head in a completely different direction only to soak down at the end. Meanwhile the leaders consolidate their lead and can cover the rest of the race. 

I never have understood it and probably never will. Alan Warren and Scroggie senior used to pick off 10-15 boats on a reach going low.

That's exactly the point.  If the reach is too tight you can't go low because in order to get enough separation from the windward brigade you won't lay the mark at the other end.  Broader reaches give you better tactical options.

To get back to Pat's point - these are only guidelines which I think should be left as they are. PROs will have their own take on how to produce fair racing.  At sea with tide, you have to offset the course for tide anyway. 

Rest assured the PRO for the 2009 champs and the Whitstable ST is watching the debate with interest and taking note!

reduce the size of the kites!!!

Interesting but some of the lighter crews raked the mast, eased the kicker and mixed it with the heavier teams. Tight reaching and hlding teh boat down can also be a very skillful job and I for one would be upset if the reaches were to be broader. If the breeze had been lighter, the reaches would have not beena consideration. We at 23.5 sailed around with he Calverts at 19.5 on several windy reaches. Most of the time, it is a case of thinking out of the normal comfort zone and adjusting the rig accordingly to the angle and conditions. Look at Moondance Assassin's photo on the Merlin description page. This was a full on reach in 30+ knots at 1ess than 20.5 stone. However, look more closely and you will see that the mast is extensively raked and main twisting off. If one practices in those conditions and sails the waves well, the loads come off and the boat flies. This requires virtually no rudder and stearing the boat by the loads on the rig. This is how we sail the Merlin and the only way we can sail the B14 in breeze as the rudder is the size of a Laser's. Less loads, less heal and more forward motion but with less weight less resistance. Good training in breeze is to tie your rudder with very strong bungy so that the max angle you can achieve is 10°. Believe me, once you have done this, you'll be quicker. You'll find that most of the time, most people use too much rudder and unsettle the eqilibruim and so slow the boat down. Try these options and then respond to the angles issue. If the reaches are easy, they'll be boring and we'll return to the problems of the previous Nationals. Also a discussion that I had with pat and others at and post Pwthelli.
BFN

Mark, there are more than the top 10 or 20 boats at most sea silver tillers and definately the champs. We have to cater for everyone, not just those at the very front.

Look more closely at photos of my boat at the champs and you will see that we - at about 25 stone and two 6 footers - were extensively raked offwind and had my kicker eased. It was hard work and, yes, it's meant to be, but make it too hard and people further down may stop coming.

Before the Looe champs i might have agreed with you on this point, but i have no desire to spend another week hanging on for grim death every day whether i'm heavy enough to do it or not. 

It's a fine balance between the two, and to keep perspective at Hayling, Tenby and Pwllheli and Looe the best team won. They would have won be it tight reaches or broad ones.

Good - I hoped this would get interesting.
You haven't let me down but I am sure there are more opinions to come!
Don't hold back.

Cheers,

Pat

I agree with Chris, we need to look at all the boats not just the chosen few! 4 boats going to Nationals at Whitstable next year from Brightlingsea, first Merlin Nationals for them all, lets not put off the sailors with tight reaches, broad is best..........

The down side of broader reaches is that if it goes so broad you are nearly running although it is arguably more tactical (go high/gybe early or go low and hope for clean air) it is similar to what we are doing on the runs and there has to be a reason for sailing the triangles or we could just do windward/leeward.  That has to be about a different challenge to sailing the beats and runs, at Looe it was not just about raw power but about getting the kite up and the boat settled and organised quickly after rounding the mark and particularly playing the waves correctly.  I don't remember anyone saying after the Wednesday that they had had awesome beats or even runs.  The overtaking opportunities were manifestly there on the tight reaches, just picking up one big wave could pull you up 50 yards in less than a minute and the course to sail was not the straight line between the two marks but what was required to keep the boat flat and play the waves.  It didn't put this back half of fleet sailor off, we probably picked up more places on the reaches than any other leg.  I may not be a lightweight but David was not a big chap.

Pat, I can't believe you said, "don't hold back," on this forum!!!

I'm sure you can imagine the way my comment is going, as Anna and I weighed sub-20 stone at this year's champs. We're at the extreme weight end, but I think our problems applied to a lot of people...

I agree with Barnsie and others on this forum - tight reaching can be tactical, playing waves/setting the boat up correctly etc etc. It can also be pretty fun... however, without a doubt, it substantially disadvantages all the lighter, less beefy, less super-strong teams and although you can depower to your heart's content, there's only so much you can do.

One thing that I discussed with a few people at the champs this year was the effect the tight reaches have on the spread of the fleet when set immediately after the beat - people round the top mark, and it turns into a procession, and when you're a smaller team, you generally get pushed backwards down the procession as you're rolled by the big guys. You then often reach the leeward mark a few boats down from where you were, but distance-wise, a lot further behind the big boys at the front. You then have your work cut out trying to get back in the game.

I'm not saying "bin tight reaches" altogether, but a bit more variety might be nice. Looe was amazing fun this year, but the almost relentlessly tight reaches became really exhausting and pretty demoralising for a lot of people. Broader reaches are v tactical, still fun (better for playing waves) and fairer for those who arent big! 

Just my opinion ;) I might have to fight it out in the bar with the big boys though...

Why not have both one tighter reach and one broader reach. It often works out like this anyway due to off position marks, tide etc.

One thing I have done in symetrical classes when I have been the R/O or been involved in writing the NOR/SIs is to put a spreader mark in place and have the first round as a windward/leeward instead of triangle. This would placate all wieghts and give the fleet the tactical possibilities that a reach may not. However, to do this fairly, you would need a minimum of 4 rounds, so including 2 triangles. Interestingly, our fastest point of sailng compared to most in the fleet at Looe was running, ask Glenn.
What we have seen from the report that appeared in the last newsletter is that we have a boat that can carry weight and the sweet spot has increased slightly from the alloy/early carbon days, which is a good thing as most would struggle to get below 22 stone. Though we have a number of teams that are lighter or heavier, the majority are near to 22.5 - 25 stone. So we need to accommodate all, but when discussing the lightweights, we also have to think of the, so far silent heavyweights who are a similar number.
The racing needs to be testing for the fleet from the front to the back but also not a case of making it a situation where the occasional meeting boat cannot get round the course. The balance is fine and I would suggest we do not change the current situation but possibly ask the respective R/O to make one reach slightly broader than the other (tide usually achieves this) to add spice to the day's sailing.
BFN

The reaches at Looe were generally pretty equal, one only slightly tighter, but do we know what the angles were?  I had thought we were gybing pretty much 90 degrees which is what we had asked for.  A reach that feels really tight in F5 is a doddle in F3, we had no racing in light winds unless you count the crew's race.

As per the last comment, I don't think the problem at Looe was that reaches were too tight, merely that it was consistently windy all week and that we should have all been down the gym a few more times to cater for that (myself included)! 

I do remember one or two occasions when one of the reaches was tight but then the other was inevitably broad so it's even stevens really.
I also remember catching a rather large wave on one of the broader ones, surfing down the other side of it and almost ending up in Tosh's boat which was entertaining! 

Depsite Ross's comment, there was at least one reach where everyone around us dropped their kites. We kept ours going and made up huge amounts of room. Admittedly, the main wasn't doing a great deal but it seemed quicker to do that than to drop. And before anyone comes out with smartass comments, no, that wasn't one of the races when we were nearly last...

But i think we all agree that Looe is as hard as we would want it? I totally agree that the conditions during the week made it seem worse/harder than it really was, but you have to allow for that to happen. Looe is traditionally a tough venue, and it's a good job we lost those two days in may respects.

We also need to be carefull what we ask for. We asked for two races per day, and on the first two race day boy did we get two races!! Ask for tighter/broader reaches and we will proabaly get just that. Maybe we need to add guidelines rather than delete them, ie if the mean wind strength is above force 4 we want the reaches to be slightly broader? For a ST meeting this may be too much but for a nationals nationals I don't think being that specific is unreasonable, if the conditions change while we're out there it may cause a problem but it's unavoidable and would cause a problem whatever we ask for.

In answer to Andrew's question.  Yes I do know what the angle was because after one particularly bruising day on which people, even at the front of the fleet, were two sail reaching I asked Roger Hocking and suggested that the reaches "might be a bit tight".  He said he was trying to set 60 degree angles because that is what the class had asked for. Subsequently I think Andy Dalby spoke to him and he did soften the reaches later in the week.

Please don't get me wrong - I am not criticising anyone; we had a fantastic week (even at 21 stone and over 110 years in the boat).  This is a very good example of an excellent race officer talking to competitors, and adjusting where necessary to provide the best possible racing.

I don't think anyone is criticising, or that anyone thinks people are criticising. We just want to improve further.

Whatever you do my guess is the same people will win!
Across the sport windward leeward courses have meant the black art of reaching with or without a spinnaker is being lost. Defined once upon a time by a great downwind sailor (Mike Jacklson.), centerboard right up, luff up in the lulls bear right off in the squalls heal in to windward a bit, pray!

For us the main problem with the tighter reaches was the gybe and not being able to get the new pole out. Probably boat set-up, but I don't remember having so many two sail gybes in a week! We struggled for height on the tighter reaches, but then our boat is a bit "special" and it is probably a set-up issue too.

Actually, I preferred the reverse courses with the runs first, kept the fleet together more, but that was mainly as we always lost more places on the reaches than on the runs.

.. but a reverse course with two classes is surely inviting chaos when the second class is beating thru a bunch of running Merlins !!!Even my solution of triangle , sausage ,triangle involves one such clash but not until both classes have become spread out . I'm not sure that Barnsies comment that it is worth spending another 30 mins to get the course right is the correct one . If ,as at Shoreham , where the wind was shifting 20 degrees a 30 mins delay would have meant that the second race would have been started in a force 6 and the course would still not have been perfect . When two classes are racing it can become nigh impossible to move marks because one or other of the classes has  already started the leg that needs changing.

The 30 minutes was refering to the finishing of the second class. At hte Tiger this year the skiffs had to wait an hour in 4�C (max) and 25 knot winds, resulting in the decimation of the faster boats heading ashore before the second race due to severe cold as there is nowhere to hide. Incidentaly tom Pygall was sick on arrival ashore betwwen racees as he was so cold. No I was refering to the fact that a slight delay is much better if it means we get a great course as most of us will spend 3 - 4 hours on the road over the weekend, then so be it. Worst thing is driving a long way, sailing a bad course and not getting good racing.

Oh forgot to mention the courses at Rutland were good, just the conditions were a killer. So bad, that the next day we were still suffering and underperformed as could not get warm even in drysuits.
Reminds me I and the otehr skiffs still have to discuss the Saturday format with the club!!!

The point I was trying to make is that if the wind is shifting 20 degrees it is impossible to set a perfect course . Even if the intention is to set a 60 degree course the first reach will be either 50 or 70 degrees - it may even be 40-80 . Fortunately such shifts are rare at Shoreham , particularly when the wind is in the SW .

Agree with last comment and know it can be very difficult. However, when on traditional Olympic courses with an extra buoy, there is alway a get out jail option. See you at Shoreham soom.
BFN

It was triangle sausage triangle at the inlands and two fleets main and vintage)and it seemed to work well. The only time we had a problem was at the leeward mark trying to complete a sausage and cross the line of the main fleet on the triangle to get to our shorter course finish. Would have helped if we had realised sooner that it was our finish though!

Isn't variety the spice of life? Within which, what's wrong with the occasional reach so tight that only the best can fly all the way?