Hi all

Just imagine that you had four yacht clubs that were some distance apart and you were trying to organise a race to a single finish line

Now traditionally you would have a single start line and the boats from each club would have to meet there to start the race so that they would all sail the same course

Now this is the totally stupid idea

If you had each club start at their own location and you set all four courses so that they were approx 22nm in a straight line with the courses converging at a point at about 7nm from the common finish line at Cygnet and started all of the boats at the same time obviously for the first 15nm of the race the boats that were running would have the shortest distance to sail and the boats that were beating would have to sail the longest distance

Could you then do calculation based on distance sailed divided by time taken to give you a average speed and then apply a handicap to this figure to work out a overall winner of the four race courses

I guess the problem is that as well as different wind directions for each course the wind strength would also be variable as well

The photos below show what could be the the four courses so let me know what you think

Regards Don

or each team finishes at another teams club rooms and rips into the bar as soon as they get there , every one looses . its a loose loose loose loose situation

Good courses in an Easterly or a westerly....

Nothing presently is working so give it a go.

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lydia said..
Nothing presently is working so give it a go.

Sounds like a lot of fun.
Give it a go.

G'day Don,
Sounds like fun, I'd give it a go!
Hmmm....you need a mechanism to avoid discontent/trouble if the wind changes to favor one course or faster boats.
How about if:
- You park one or two club RIB/support boats off Huon Island with a handful of colored streamers or flags of some form. Set 'em slightly apart like a gate.
- Each boat has to sail past and grab a streamer from a RIB and hand it in at the end as proof they have sailed the course. Good seamanship resulting in a clean grab of a streamer will add a bit of spice to the race, a bad pass will mean you're doing circles trying to line up for another pass.
- If the wind does change and clearly favours a particular bunch of boats, move the RIB and make it more difficult for those boats to get to you which will slow them down.
- The RIB broadcasts their location on VHF if they move.
- After the wind favoured boats gets past, move back to your original position to give the backenders a shorter course.
- If boats aren't favoured, you don't have to move the RIB.

No tin cup just bragging rights so you don't have lots of arguments. Call it the Endangered Burgee race or something.
Good on you for trying something different mate, I'd be in.

Don
Isn't the trick to try to have everyone arrive at Huon island at the same time no the finish.
That way the whole fleet sails the last 4 miles in company.

But in a Seabreeze I am doing the Dover race.

Hi all

Thanks for the input and a bit of background on how this wild idea came about

The Huon Yacht Club at Port Huon for the past 51 years has run the Cock of the Huon race on a Saturday afternoon that was the middle race in the Pipe Opener Series conducted by the Derwent Sailing Squadron which consisted of the Pipe Opener, a Friday night race starting at 7pm in Hobart with the finish line around Gordon in the channel which is a distance of approx 20nm, a 3 hour motor to Port Huon for The Cock of the Huon race on the on Saturday afternoon, and then a race back from Port Huon to Gordon on the Sunday

The Pipe Opener for a lot of years started at Hobart and went the full distance to Port Huon which is 40nm so it was a all night race and all of the competing boats ended up at Port Huon and I am not sure when the course was shortened

The owner of the Kermandie Hotel and the Kermandie Marina would make space available in the marina for the visiting boats for the weekend and on the Saturday night we would have a dinner and presentation night at the Hotel so it was a good arrangement for all involved with lots of hungry and thirsty sailors drinking, eating and booking rooms at the hotel

Over the past few years the number of boats have have finished the Friday night race and then continued on to Port Huon for the remaining two races of the series has dwindled to the point where last year we only had 9 visitor boats compete in the Cock of the Huon out of a total of 23 that competed in the Pipe Opener race along with 3 Huon Yacht Club boats (so we were not supporting the Cock of the Huon race that well either)

As you can see 12 boats and their crews do not add up to a lot of people at the presentation night at the Hotel and after considering what options were available the DSS in conjunction with the Kettering Yacht Club made the decision to finish the race at Kettering instead (about 14nm and 25 minutes drive from Hobart) have the Saturday race based out of Kettering in the Channel and then have a race back from Kettering to Hobart on the Sunday which made the whole series a lot closer to Hobart

I can see why they have done this and it will probably be a success with much higher number of boats electing to compete and stay and do the whole series but it has left the Huon Yacht Club with a Cock of the Huon trophy to use for a race

My wild idea was that if you can conduct a race where no one has to travel to a start line from their home port but all end up at a single finish line (Cygnet) then you might have a lot more boats enter, be prepared to stay the night and they can make their way home the next day

The reason for choosing Cygnet over Port Huon as a finish line is that we are trying to do a lot more with the Cygnet sailors, the Port Cygnet Sailing Club can host a sizeable function at their clubhouse on the Saturday night which we can't, it would encourage Cygnet sailors (a lot more of them than us) to compete in the race, they have water taxi boats and competitors can raft up with other boats as they do in the Cygnet Regatta each year and if the whole thing ended up being a flop we haven't promised the Hotel 200 people at a function and end up with 50

I know that to try and determine a fair winner out of the whole fleet starting at 4 different locations would be almost impossible but down here where conditions change that much throughout the day it is a bit of a lottery as to who wins out of the slow and the fast boats in a mixed fleet even when they all sail the same course

As i said in the initial post perhaps the winner could be determined by measured distance traveled by each boat divided by time taken to travel that distance (does that sort out the runners out the runners from the reachers and beaters) multiplied by their handicap multiplied by a correction factor determined by looking at the average wind strength they faced before arriving at the meeting point of the courses at Huon Island (the problem is that they will all arrive at different times with the finial leg to the finish line being in different conditions

The winner is never going to be exact but does it really matter as long as you get good numbers and everyone has a good time and we get to hand out the funny hat that is part of the night or am I making a mockery out of what up until now was a serious race


Regards Don

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lydia said..
Don
Isn't the trick to try to have everyone arrive at Huon island at the same time no the finish.
That way the whole fleet sails the last 4 miles in company.

But in a Seabreeze I am doing the Dover race.

Hi Lydia

I think the only way to do that is to start the race at Huon Island Which i suppose you could and then race up the rive to Port Houn, round a mark and then finish it at Cygnet which maybe isn't a bad an idea

If we did that that the race use the whole sailable length of the Huon River for boats of varied draft and each starting point would have a maximum 2 hour motor from home to the start line and perhaps that would make it a fairer and a serious race

Regards Don

As there are so many variables with handicapping there is always going to be some boats with more advantages than others, so give the handicap winner bragging rights and his name on the mug, but make your major prize (eg. A couple of hundred dollars or a big bottle of Rum) a lucky sail draw of all competitors. I have run many regattas over the years and I have found this system keeps everyone happy knowing they all have an equal chance at the major prize. All said and done the event would be treated as a social and fun event with a great overnight stay at the end.

Don you are getting ****ed over by the Hobart clubs in particular DSS and you will never get your fleet back.
Just put on what the locals want.

There will be zero correlation between the logic of the race and the number of participants. In fact, the stupider the logic, the more people are likely to enrol. I don't mean this in a judgemental sense. Indeed, it's quite endearing. For example,consider the boat races in Alice springs, or man powered flight competitions on Brighton pier (uk). So, find a way to make it really stupid. Maybe convert it to a dog race. It's not the first boat that crosses the line but the first dog. No engines.