Racing Discussions

HHSA needs to continue the shorthanded class into 2021. Reports from other clubs indicated their racing fleets shrunk and they did not do SH. There is clearly a desire to race by our members. SH class enabled new folks to come out and play. Racing is about competing so SH provides a fun environment that promotes another field of play for new racing families. Shorthanded A & B would be worth looking into.

I concur with the notion of creating a cruising spinnaker class. Drawing up the parameters to differentiate it from the established spinnaker class will have challenges but its worth trying. You folks are very smart like that. Parameters might include

• requiring a sock,
• no poles,
• limiting sprit length,
• no jib/genoa up during launch/takedown,
• etc.

As for awards, consider a captains only live event with crews on zoom. Locations might be Skippers Pier or Hidden Harbor. If we do a zoom only event, we can mail the awards.

No opinion on ORR.

OTHER

Destination race to Miles River/St Michaels. Coordinate with Miles River YC for the finish. (They might be interest in our SH Class)

Make around Poplar Island a race. Long race.

New RRS Rules seminar

Any lessons learned from being RC this year? RC gear issues?

Ideas for socially distant after-race gatherings? I missed Folks going to Skippers this year.

NEW RACERS! What would get your dockmates out on Wednesday Nights?

My 10 cents

Mark

First, I want to congratulate Michel on an absolutely tremendous job putting the racing program together on the fly.  What a fun season. 

I’m in favor of keeping the SH class and bringing back the spinnaker class, assuming we can get enough participants.  More classes than that might be dividing the fleet up too much. 

I also would like to put a couple of minor issues on the table for the competition committee to consider.  The first involves course G short ( strong southeast wind).  In my opinion this is a really wonderful course that requires significant crew work, start to 81A, to 1, to 81A, to 1, to A for finish.  Two up wind legs and two downwind legs and a final reach, all relatively short.  And since the wind is often SE, it could be a poplar course on Wednesday evenings. The problem is that while it is over 6 miles it is designated as the short course.  This far too long for non spinnaker boats on a Wednesday night.  I propose we designate it the long course. The short course can be to 81A, back to 1, and in to A, about 4 miles, with an upwind leg, a downwind leg and a reach. The length of both courses can be adjusted by moving the start line: near 1 for a shorter course or back toward B for a longer course. 

The other issue concerns an oddity with the awarding of high points for races.  If a boat comes out to race, checks in with the committee boat, and then decides not to race our policy is to score the boat as DNS and award them start points.  I really don’t have a problem with this.  But, we also award high points to boats that did race for beating the boats that did not race.  That seems bit odd that a boat would get credit for beating a boat that didn’t race.  Anyway that’s my two cents for the discussion. 

Kent

Rich, good observations/points. I can answer some of that now without a trial. AYC has a really good explanation for why they are advocating ORC (attached), but what it boils down to is "trading simplicity for fairness"; what they say here could also be true for ORR (there is a separate ORR vs ORC discussion). No doubt it would be more complicated, but the question is "would it be more fair?" How would we measure that in a way that is meaningful to us at HHSA?

Michel,

1/24 works for me! A few proposed agenda changes:

1. Given this strange year we just had, I propose we table a final class discussion until after we not only have the survey results, but also who renews as racers by 1 March and what (if any) changes COVID may cause. We can have a separate CC meeting in late March/early April to finalize the classes.
2. I propose we drop the ORR discussion from this meeting. Since there was never an intent to have a separate class but only to compare results in a "virtual class" that doesn't count for anything, I will just reach out to anyone desiring to participate in the experiment and we will work it out amongst ourselves (but would appreciate a question in the survey asking if they are willing to voluntarily participate).
3. I agree with Kent on 17.C.4 and I have a few other scoring questions that are worth at least re-visiting since some of the assumptions about the racing fleet when they were written may not be true anymore. I propose we have have a rules/scoring subcommittee that includes at least Hank, Keith, Ted and anyone else interested to go through the questions/issues in a separate meeting and report back to the full CC to avoid bogging down the January meeting.

Thanks!

Jason

I would like to include discussion of Cruising Spinnaker Class at the meeting. Also, i think a seminar on the different rating systems would be productive in getting more people educated and facilitating a more robust discussion.

Mark

This is all exactly why we need as many people as possible tomorrow.

The agenda or survey are not conclusions. Only data points.