Pre-Season Race Update
Published 09:48 on 6 Apr 2023
It was fantastic to have so many of our members join us for our Welcome to New Members and Pre-Season Social on Wednesday 5th April. After a winter without activity on a Wednesday evening it was wonderful to have 37 members come together for fish and chips, wit more members joining us for a drink and chat. After we'd eaten the Main and Sailing Committees were introduced and various updates and information on our training and racing programmes were given, before a rules talk and Race Officer Refresher from some of our more experienced racers. At the bottom of this page is the Powerpoint Presentation that was used during the evening, and here is a summary of the updates.
Sailing Instructions
Some great work has been done over the winter period by John Driscoll, Robert Marshall and Nick Robinson to refine our sailing instructions making them clearer with less text, and some tweaks to help keep racing as fair and easy to run as possible. The key change are:
- A return to "Two-Turn" Penalties for Part-2 (When Boats Meet) Rule Infringements
- The Portsmouth Yardstick Numbers used for Handicap and Pursuit Racing will be the RYA Recommended Numbers, except for "vintage craft" - if you believe you have a vintage craft which would qualify for a bespoke number please speak to John Driscoll (results Co-Ordinator) or Les Radford (Sailing Secretary)
- During Pursuit Race Series there will no longer be a 1-minute penalty applied to sailors who come 1st or 2nd
- New Personal Handicap Pursuit Series Grading System (see more below)
- New longer "Fast Fleet" Pursuit Races allowing Gul's, Topper 6.4s and Topper 5.3s to choose whether they sail in Slow or Fast Fleet
- A requirement to hold £3million 3rd Party Liability Insurance when racing (this clarifies the previous requirement and aligns with the Club's Byelaws).
You can read our full Sailing Instructions here.
Personal Pursuit Handicap Gradings
The Club's Personal Pursuit Handicap Races have been a popular part of our programme for a number of years. This style of racing gives less experienced racers an extra helping hand, allowing them to challenge (and beat) some of our most experienced racers who are routinely at the front of the fleet. To help improve this format we have made some adjustments.
First up we now have 8 grades of Personal Handicap, rather than the previous 4. This will allow for a greater differentiation between sailors, and hopefully provide fairer racing, There is now a 1-minute time adjustment between the different grades. The grades are now known as 0 - 7, with 0 being the grade for tor the newest racers, with 7 being for the most experienced and successful. The grade you are corresponds to the time you add to your class start time. So for example a Grade 7 Firefly Sailor would start at 17 (10 minute base time, plus 7 minutes for personal handicap). A list of the revised start times and grades is available in the race hut. For further advice please speak to the Race Officer on the day or any member of the Sailing Committee.
Secondly the way handicap grades are determined has been standardised. For all sailors who raced in handicap races in 2022 a mathematical analysis has been done, and grades assigned on this basis initially. The Sailing Committee has then reviewed the grades and agreed them before publishing. A review of all the grades will be undertaken following the Holman Bowl Series. In the Race Hut is a list of all the Handicap Grades which have been allocated If you think your grade is not appropriate (or one hasn't been issued) please speak to Robert Marshall who has kindly agreed to oversee our Pursuit Racing for 2023, or your Class Captain.
Racing Programme
We once again have a very busy Club Racing Programme with a range of race formats including a new "Sprint Series" on Sunday afternoons during the Summer. In addition to our multi-week series' there are a number of "Special Event Sundays," which normally coincide with Bank Holidays, our first one is this weekend on Easter Sunday! We also have a number of Open Meetings running at Spinnaker Sailing Club this year for our most popular classes including the ILCA, Solo, Byte, Optimist, Aero and Firefly, while our Topper Open was a couple of weeks ago.
We rely upon our members to help with race duties to enable this programme to run, and would encourage members to volunteer early to ensure they are rostered for duties that are convenient for them.
Training Programme
We have a full programme of training in dinghies, powerboats and windsurfing planned for this year! We are very excited to be introducing windsurfing with our first course running next week. As a Club we are currently an RYA Recognised Training Centre for Dinghy Sailing and Powerboating, and we are looking forward to being inspected to gain recognition for Windsurfing later this year.
Our regular coaching sessions of Spinnaker Youth Training on Sundays (for our younger members) and Let's Go Sailing on Tuesday evenings for adults are back again this year and start in the next 2 weeks, There is still space to book onto both programmes, and these are great ways to regularly sail with the support and coaching from our team of professional coaches and instructors.
Don't forget we have heavily subsidised powerboat training opportunities for members who commit to duties this year.
Opportunities Beyond Spinnaker Sailing Club
As well as the opportunities we provide directly as a Club there are a number of opportunities available through Class Associations and the RYA we can link our members of all ages to. There is a summary of these opportunities in the Powerpoint Presentation below, otherwise please speak to the relevant Class Captain or James Oborne.
How To Stay In Touch
Our Class Captain's run a number of Whatsapp Groups to allow our members to stay in touch and up to date, as well as our staff team regularly sending out a racing specific newsletter. To sign up for the racing newsletter please email training@spinnakerclub.co.uk, while there are Whatsapp Groups for Solos, ILCAs, Spinnaker Youth Training, Team Racing and Handicap Fleet sailors! Below is a list of our Sailing Committee members, along with who runs which Whatsapp Group for your information:
Tom Clay - Read Commodore Sailing
Les Radford - Sailing Secretary
James Oborne - Chief Instructor
John Driscoll - Results Co-Ordinator
Gareth Humphrey - ILCA Captain (ILCA/Laser Whatsapp Group)
Nick Robinson - Solo Captain (Solo Whatsapp Group)
Neil Marshall - Firefly Captain
Keith McQuillin - Handicap Captain (Handicap Whatsapp Group)
Nick Smith - Topper Captain
Emma Barker - SYT Co-Ordinator and Optimist Captain (SYT and Team Racing Whatsapp Groups)
Rod Small - Non-Racing Representative
Robert Marshall - Pursuit Race Co-Ordinator
Paul Gray
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Last updated 09:41 on 20 December 2023
