Lock up the dogs spring mag due for delivery Monday/Tuesday

Keep these renewals coming in.  32 new. Members this year now

Wow, its here AND the Year Book!!

There is going to be a big article on merlins in the yachts and yachting ready for boat show, sounds a good read

Great mag pat and who are these handsome lads on the back cover

Got mine this evening, already read it. Great read!

geoffs article on trailers made interesting reading...

Aparently he is the only trailer company in the country to have this nailed down, or at least he was. Certainly the best and nicest at any rate!

I see from the entry form for the champs that we can elect to sail in the gold or silver fleet.  What is all that about, and what about the bronze fleet? I might have a chance there.

Once again a great mag Pat.  Many thanks.

Beat me to it Mr Grumpy - can't see anything about it in the published NoR.  If it's to reward the old boat/rank amateur helm contingent count me in, but if it's shorter courses/fewer races I'd rather be with the big boys and see if I can finish ahead of a Winder or two.

Andrew

Dear Andrew and Mr Grumpy

After last years problems with the Handicap system, where I believe Stu and Christian won the Holt Plate, we decided to try the Gold /Silver fleet system to ensure a more even spread of prize-winners. It is used very successfully with many other classes, is very easy to follow and administer as no handicapping is required and no timing! 
Everybody sails on the same course with the same start so you still sail against the hot shots, you still keep your result but you also have a Silver fleet result. I.e if you finished 46th in the race, you might be 10th for example against the silver fleet boats.  
I hope that is clear, please be assured there will be NO seperate starts as happened at Salcombe a few years back.
If it is found to be a problem then next year we can always revert back to handicapping and hope that one of the hotshots doesn't win the Holt Plate yet again!!

Apologies for lack of info and we'll get some proper criteria on the champs site by the end of the day, but in summary we are trialling running gold and silver fleets as we won't be running the Holt Plate handicapping this year - one race for all without the headache of timing every finisher. 

If we can get it working as well as other fleets have then it will provide an added incentive/reward for the mid-fleet sailors.

Thanks for that Will & Sophie, Silver fleet here I come!

Fleet criteria now posted in the champs website under 'News' - we look forward to receiving your entries...

If you have any questions about this or any other champs related stuff please don't hesitate to get in touch with William or myself.

For what it is worth we experienced a similar situation in 2010 at the Penzance Champs. Stu was clearly sailing very well and was leading the Holt plate that year too. We (the organisers) decided, with his agreement that we should modify the handicaps during the week - cue accusations of "fix" here. We ended up with the list of usual suspects sailing off foiling moth handicaps and we continuously tweaked the numbers so that there was no run-away winner. Even giving the fleet some 250 points on the handicap, Stu still wasn't out the back of the fleet.

As it happened we actually won the Holt Plate, with a handicap that was progressively made worse throughout the week. Andy Dalby came second and was suitably rewarded for sailing superbly that week (he wasn't in the General Lee though ...). Great prizes from our supporters for this competition too.

Shame this competition is not going to be awarded as it was something different and something for those out of the top 20 who are sailing better than the fleet would give them credit for. It is a pain if you shorten the races for those at the back or are lapped and it is another thing for the race committee to do. Penzance SC did wonderfully well with this.

Good luck with the fleets idea, we are not coming to Tenby, so it will be interesting to see whether this works and rewards those who sail particularly well during the week.

Thanks William and Sophie for the explanation. All is now clear. I never liked the handicaps for the Holt Plate, having had to do them for two champs.  There was always an element of "fix" so this is certainly worth a try.