Race Management

So here I am, trying to redress the balance after several posts I wrote whining about race committees and regatta organizers, letting the world know yesterday of a story about how Malletts Bay Boat Club was able to post the results of the 2007 Laser US Nationals so quickly…

When some dude called Brian leaves a comment telling me about all the problems at the self-same regatta and letting all the air out of the balloon. Apparently Brian had to walk an eighth of a mile most days, and failed to make the time limit in one race, and suffered other gross indignities such as having to look at a sign saying “Member Parking Only”…

Well, I have to admit that dude Brian has the jump on me because he actually sailed in the regatta while I have just been soaking up the propaganda promulgated on the web by the regatta organizers. But even so…

I refuse to be brought down by dude Brian’s negativity. I demand to hear good news about race committees and regatta organizers. So please tell me…

What was the best example you have seen this year of excellence in race management?

Which regatta organizers did a superb job in your view?

What regatta did you sail this year where you left thinking, “These folk just know how to run a regatta properly. I will be back.”?

Give me some good news. I insist.

Original post by Tillerman and software by Elliott Back

Captain JP asked a great question today: Are bad posts good?

His point is that the most popular post on his blog recently was about his Worst Ever Race. Apparently people love to read about others’ misfortunes. I’ve had a similar experience. No — I never tried racing a triple-reefed Topper in a Force 2 wind. What I mean is that on this blog too, the most widely read recent post was the one where I was whining about the Uncrustables in a regatta lunch. Folk apparently love a good negative story, especially if it bashes some poor, overworked, volunteer regatta-organizer.

I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. Check out your major newspaper or TV news program. It’s the bad news that makes the headlines. And the talk shows are full of politicians rubbishing the performance of your country’s selfless, dedicated, masterly government leaders.

I’ve done a lot of whining about regatta organizers and race committees lately. I do feel guilty about writing so much negative stuff. My only excuses are that I do also write about my own screw-ups in various capacities, and one can only hope that talking about other people’s mistakes will make us all better sailors, race committee staff, sailing club leaders, sailing instructors, or purveyors of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for hungry sailors. No. Scrub that last one.

So to change to a more positive tone, let’s give credit to a race committee that knows how to do things right. Check out the account of how Malletts Bay Boat Club managed to record the finishes of the 2007 US Laser Nationals accurately and post them so quickly to the web. It’s a story of attention to detail, superb organization and planning, practice, well-designed processes, delegation, intelligent use of technology, and commitment to excellence.

Congratulations to Malletts Bay. Other RCs please note. It can be done.

Original post by Tillerman and software by Elliott Back

There’s been some whining in some quarters recently about the ability or willingness of organizers of major regattas to post results and news about their events on-line in a prompt manner. (Not here of course. I never whine about regatta organizers.)

So let’s give kudos (and smarties and M&Ms too) to Mallets Bay Boat Club, host of the 2007 US Laser Nationals who have someone on the finish boat posting live updates about action on the water today and who by 2pm had already posted some of the results of today’s races while other races are still going on.

Way to go Mallets Bay.

Original post by Tillerman and software by Elliott Back

Dear Race Committee,

Thanks for giving up your free time to run this regatta for us. I appreciate that you are all volunteers, would probably rather be sailing yourself, and that some of you may be relatively new to the sport and have been invited to make up the numbers on the RC boat so you can see what racing is all about.

Having said all that (and I do appreciate you, I really do, and I have been in your shoes many times) could I please offer a few suggestions…

1. If the sailing instructions say that the first warning signal will be at 11am, and the winds are steady, and there has been no postponement on shore, and all the competitors can easily sail to the course by that time… please, please, please be on station at 11am, have the marks in the water, and be ready to start a race. There is nothing more frustrating for us racers than to get up early on a Saturday morning, drive several hours to the regatta site, rig our boats, spend an hour sailing out to the course… and then have to sit around for another hour while you get yourselves organized.

2. You’ve been watching the America’s Cup on TV haven’t you? You saw how Peter ‘Luigi’ Reggio waited each day for the perfect wind, and adjusted the course and start line for every little windshift… and now you want to be just like Luigi?

Please don’t. This is not the America’s Cup. Luigi only had to run one race a day, and even if he didn’t run a race today there was always tomorrow. For us there is no tomorrow. This is a one day regatta. We want as many races as possible. Please don’t futz around for 40 minutes moving the course marks for every 5 degree wind shift. We don’t care. We just want to go racing. In any case the chances are that the wind will shift some more by the time you position all the marks exactly where you want them, so forget about it. If the line and course are more or less right, then start the sequence and let’s race.

3. Have you ever thought that the most important thing about the visual signals you make is that the sailors can see them? So if the fleet is going off upwind after the start and you want to signal a general recall, please don’t ask the smallest person on your team to stand on the stern of the RC boat with a general recall flag that’s totally obscured from the racers by the cabin on your boat. I know you’re getting frustrated when it takes such a long time for all the fleet to come back to the start line after every recall. Have you stopped to wonder why?

4. And while we’re talking about how you assign tasks to the members of your team, what were you thinking when you selected the guy to read the sail numbers at the finish line? Has he seen an optician lately? Or did he forget to bring his spectacles?

Here’s a clue that he may not be the best man for the job: you find that a significant percentage of the numbers that he called don’t match to any of the numbers of the sailors registered for the regatta, and on the other hand you end up with a bunch of sailors who are entered who apparently didn’t finish some of the races at random even though you didn’t spot anyone leaving the course or ducking out of any race.

5. We like to hear from you. If you are about to do something unusual then do us the courtesy of using that loudhailer that you have on the RC boat. For example if you signalled a two-lap course and then after a couple of recalls and postponements, you change your mind and decide to give us a one-lap course then please, please, please make sure we all know about it.

Don’t just ask one of your team to erase surreptitiously the numeral 2 on the course board and expect us all to spot the change. Some of us are not that smart and have other things on our minds like “which end of the line should I start this time” or “will my wonky tiller extension universal hold together for one more race” or “do I have time to have a pee before the next start”. We’re not all mind readers. Please hail and let us know you’ve changed the course.

I think that’s all for now. Thanks for being on race committee. I appreciate all your efforts. I really do.

Original post by Tillerman and software by Elliott Back

Our group writing project on worst race-committee screw-ups revealed some amazing tales of staggering ineptitude, conceit, foolishness and even intoxication. Why is that some of us who are probably highly successful in our careers as well as being excellent racing sailors suddenly become blithering idiots as soon as we step on to a race committee boat? Who knows?

On the other hand there are some extremely competent race committees and regatta organizers out there. One place that I can always rely on to run a professional event is the Hyannis YC, host of the Laser North Americans a couple of weeks ago. I’ve sailed several other major events there before, so with Peter Johns as regatta chairman and Tom Duggan as Principal Race Officer I had high hopes for a superb weekend of well-run sailing.

Thursday was a frustrating day with no racing because of high winds. I talked about this day in Waiting Game and discussed some issues relating to such days in Are You Experienced? There was some grumbling in some quarters about the decision not to race but personally I’m sure Duggan made the right call. Certainly I would not have taken 200 Laserites of varying abilities a couple of miles offshore in those conditions, no matter how many Mommy Boats were there to support me.

So the qualification series was cut to one day and we had an awesome day of racing on Friday with the best conditions one could hope for, and with the Hyannis YC race committee doing their usual top-notch professional job enabling us to complete the maximum allowed three races on that day.

The results of the qualification series weren’t posted at the club when I left around 7pm that evening. Not that I cared. I knew that my scores were “good” enough to qualify me to sail in the silver fleet for the rest of the regatta. And I wasn’t wrong. When I arrived at the club on Saturday morning and all the sailors clustered around the noticeboard to check the scores I had to squat down on the floor to find my name way, way, way down near the bottom of the list.

But wait. What’s this? Some sailors are complaining about the scores. There appears to be a major problem. Some sailors who thought that they were at the front of the fleet haven’t made the cut for the gold fleet. The committee is busy handing out forms and various sailors file their complaints. A postponement is signalled. A notice is put on the board explaining that some scores are in error. And we wait.

The problem is that we can’t go sailing until the scores are corrected. Today we are going to be split into gold and silver fleets and it would certainly be unfair to put a genuine contender for the North American Championship into the silver fleet along with bozos like me. So we wait. And wait.

The breeze fills in to a juicy 10-12 knots and we all want to go sailing. A rumor goes around the boat park that the Standard Rig scores are now correct but they’re still working on the Radials. More grumbling. Harsh words are spoken about the competence of the race committee. We wait and wait as the morning drifts by with the postponement flag still fluttering in the breeze.

But what else can the race committee do? Mistakes will happen when you are running a major regatta. Humans err. Equipment malfunctions. Anchors drag. Software fails (apparently what happened here). The measure of a good race committee is that they recognize when there is a problem and then go ahead and correct it as quickly as humanly possible. If you make an error in a starting sequence, blow off that start and do it again. If you signal the course wrongly and half the fleet goes the wrong way, abandon that race and start it again. Many of the stories told by contributors to the Top Race Committee Screw-ups last week are about race committees who were so ignorant or oblivious that they didn’t even know they had made a mistake.

So what did they do at Hyannis? They corrected all the incorrect scores and re-posted a list of who had qualified for the gold and silver fleets. I checked the list again to make sure. Hmmm. I went up two places. How did that happen? In any case my name was still only a few inches of the floor and I was comfortably in the silver fleet.

We eventually hit the water around 11:30am if I recall correctly. Out on the racecourse the race committee had a tough time with shifty winds and a strong upwind current leading to many postponements and recalls. But they persevered and pulled off three fair races for the Standard Rigs. We were back at the club around 6pm so no real harm was done by the scoring screw-up.

At the regatta dinner that night one of the organizers apologised to all the sailors for the problems with scoring that morning. I was impressed. Having spent a good chunk of my professional life running an IT service organization I’ve been in that guy’s shoes more times than I care to recall. Computers have glitches. Stuff happens. Real world activity has to be delayed while the IT guys clear up the mess. And the IT manager has to go to the users and apologise whether there was anything he could have done to prevent the problem or not.

Hats off to Peter Johns, Tom Duggan and all the volunteers who did a magnificent job in running the 2007 Laser North Americans. You guys are a class act. I will be back.

Original post by Tillerman and software by Elliott Back

OK — it’s time to wrap up the group writing project on Top Race Committee Screw-ups. Thanks to all who participated. There were some truly awful stories of incompetence, arrogance, ignorance and stupidity of the highest order. It’s good to see that the fine tradition of abysmal race management is alive and well at the grass-roots level. After all as my friend and occasional guest blogger Joe always says, “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

Here is the complete list of entries.

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

T E A S by Chris Jordan.

April Folly.

Joe would be proud of you all.

Original post by Tillerman and software by Elliott Back

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.

Original post by Tillerman and software by Elliott Back

Oops, I missed yet another story written for our Learning Experiences project, Lessons Learned from the Mallory Championships at Elephant Butte, where Pat reflects on lessons learned from running a men’s championship elimination regatta.

Pat asks, “How many things do you think can go wrong in a sailboat race? More than you, as a competitor, might think. And, if we’re really, really lucky, some of the mistakes may be small enough that competitors never realize they happened.”

Also posted on Desert Sea - New Mexico Sailing are some pictures, a race summary, and lots of data.

Original post by Tillerman and software by Elliott Back