World Championship Regatta Feedback

Bruce Andersen · Post by **Bruce Andersen** » 21 Oct 2007, 05:32

In an effort to fine tune the procedures for running large regattas, please send me thoughts, comments, or general feedback concerning the WC's. Either post them on the board, or send me a PM. Please, let's keep this thread on track and concentrate on what we did right or constructive criticism of what we did poorly with suggestions for improvement.

Barry Fox CAN262 · Post by **Barry Fox CAN262** » 22 Oct 2007, 23:32

As a non-combatant I'll putin my two bits worth.

I can say nothing about how the event was run, operated, overseen or any of that on site stuff but I'd say that for those of us who had to stay home the coverage was tremendous.

The race by race results, delivered in a most timely way, some of the brief commentaries about the weather and conditions and the daily photos, arranged so they flowed with the races and you could kind of follow along after the fact were outstanding.

There were 76 skippers sailing but there are thousands of us wanna be's who have a definite interest in how it is all going. With this great service we were able to live vicariously via the web.

I know some would like to see more detail about protests, etc. but these folks are busy running a world class event and I think there are some real limits on how far you can go delivering this.

From what I could read there were some periods where the wind didn't cooperate much so to get in 23 races of 5 heats seems to have been a great effort.

Viewed from the outside there wasn't too much wrong.

GraemeT · Post by **GraemeT** » 24 Oct 2007, 13:39

Being in a similar position to Barry I support his comments fully.

Watching the event at a distance the posting of results at the completion of each race and the excellent sequenced photographs on the French IOM Class site (www.classe1metre.org) was excellent and would take a lot of beating.

We were also fortunate in having an Australian perspective provided by David Turton in his daily blog which kept us informed with snippets of the action both on the water and afterwards. Great stuff.

Congratulations to all involved.

Alfonso · Post by **Alfonso** » 28 Dec 2007, 11:52

Most of the world is on holiday. Let us see if we can liven up this forum because I am really surprise that after two months there are no feedbacks. OK, we have to admit that the champioship was good but there are still some areas where we can improve.

In my opinion we, as a class, have to work a lot on Race Officers and Umpire/Jury.

Things that PRO did wrong:

- Too many black flags, I have never sailed in any local, national or international event with so many black flags. It didnâ€™t matter which fleet were racing E or A, because we all had to race with this rule in force in more than four starts. Probably something was wrong: the starting line was too close to the first mark, a shift biased the line, or the line was short. It is childish to think that the only problem is over aggressiveness by competitors.

- No reference to control starting/finishing line. PRO looked at the line like everybody else, he never used any system to line up mark with mark.

- Drive the competitor crazy. I donâ€™t know why he liked the Olympic triangle course so much because every day we started with this course and only after a couple of races where something happened (big mess at 2nd mark because nobody could see the boat, boats on the run crashing with boats on the beat, etc) he changed again to windward/leeward with offset course.

- To see or not to see. In some situations when the direction of the wind was not â€œcorrectâ€

ELLIOTT · Post by **ELLIOTT** » 30 Dec 2007, 20:45

Hit the nail on the head, good report Alfonso.Especially like your last suggestion, there used to be feedback when we had country representatives so maybe this should be reinstated. Graham Elliott

Gilbert Louis · Post by **Gilbert Louis** » 31 Dec 2007, 00:36

Hi,
like Barry and Graeme I can't comment on the day to day runing of the event but I found they kept the audience "ie those of us who followed from home" interested with reports, pictures on daily basis between their official site and the french association site.

So on that point I would say well done and congratulations to the people involved.

It seems from other discussions that it is getting harder to get clubs to organise events like these and it doesn't seem specific to IOM but it's the same for other classes too. So if not already done would it be beneficial to compile an event guide for clubs organising these events. This guide will explain how the event is run, heat systems, reminder of basic RRS and more specifically appendix E for RC boats, role of expectations of umpires, preparation of umpires and any other specifics like marks, distance from control area, various course layouts, course length, other logistic details, etc... it may help clubs and class to organise a successful event together as the club will know what the class expect and the class and its skippers will know how the event will be run... Off course being a guide it should remain as such and not becoming a non bendable format to leave enough to the club organiser to contribute.

This should help to capture ideas like the one from Alfonso to be added. This guide can be reviewed on yearly basis...

Hope this helps...