Post by brianpickton on Dec 28, 2006 14:10:07 GMT -4
Hi folks,
We are looking at improving a few things for the DYC racing community this year, although not at quite the pace we set last year with more than a dozen changes made in the first 12 weeks. Every single change was met with a complaint, who did we think we were Chester Race Week? What did we think this was, the America's Cup? Nothing like sailors for resisting change. Of course by the end of the season if the race committee wasn't doing it the new way and went back to the old way there was no end of complaining! So for those of you who like whining ( there are three) you will be delighted to hear that we will be doing a whole lot more for you this season! Those of you who want to see things continue to improve should be even happier!
Apart from the usual 3 whiners we received some excellent suggestions on a number of fronts and were able to incorporate some of those into the racing season, and we will again be looking for positive suggestions from the sailing community again this year. It was interesting to see how this would happen. Often a member would sidle up beside me and without preamble make a quiet suggestion and just as quietly slip away. In every case they had a good idea that I was able to use on the committee boat.
This year I will be looking for your suggestions again and would invite those who are interested but can't catch up to me to post them here, since I check into this site regularly. We are looking at improving many things we started last year, but in many cases the results will not be quite so visible to the fleet since they involve improvements to the RC's equipment. (I put a wish list into Santa for the RC)
The major thing that the fleets can expect to see is that we are considering going back to a fixed starting line, but instead of only one buoy for the committee to moor to we are going to try to set three with the view to having them squared to the south west, west and north west, which will cover most of our sailing scenarios for Wednesday Night. This season as many of you are aware we tried working with a movable mooring, which went well until we got our anchor caught in a crack. Someone complained that they hadn't seen a line that long since the Volvo Cup!
Eventually I found the time to build a new movable mooring that we got to use exactly twice when some power boater no doubt navigating using the force ran over it and cut it lose. A couple of weeks ago the old mooring that sank a couple of years ago resurfaced, so I tied a new float to it to keep it from disappearing again and we used that for the balance of the season after dragging it out a little way to square it to the west and southwest a bit better.
There are some other things that we are discussing at the RC and when I have some more info I'll post it here again.
We are looking at improving a few things for the DYC racing community this year, although not at quite the pace we set last year with more than a dozen changes made in the first 12 weeks. Every single change was met with a complaint, who did we think we were Chester Race Week? What did we think this was, the America's Cup? Nothing like sailors for resisting change. Of course by the end of the season if the race committee wasn't doing it the new way and went back to the old way there was no end of complaining! So for those of you who like whining ( there are three) you will be delighted to hear that we will be doing a whole lot more for you this season! Those of you who want to see things continue to improve should be even happier!
Apart from the usual 3 whiners we received some excellent suggestions on a number of fronts and were able to incorporate some of those into the racing season, and we will again be looking for positive suggestions from the sailing community again this year. It was interesting to see how this would happen. Often a member would sidle up beside me and without preamble make a quiet suggestion and just as quietly slip away. In every case they had a good idea that I was able to use on the committee boat.
This year I will be looking for your suggestions again and would invite those who are interested but can't catch up to me to post them here, since I check into this site regularly. We are looking at improving many things we started last year, but in many cases the results will not be quite so visible to the fleet since they involve improvements to the RC's equipment. (I put a wish list into Santa for the RC)
The major thing that the fleets can expect to see is that we are considering going back to a fixed starting line, but instead of only one buoy for the committee to moor to we are going to try to set three with the view to having them squared to the south west, west and north west, which will cover most of our sailing scenarios for Wednesday Night. This season as many of you are aware we tried working with a movable mooring, which went well until we got our anchor caught in a crack. Someone complained that they hadn't seen a line that long since the Volvo Cup!
Eventually I found the time to build a new movable mooring that we got to use exactly twice when some power boater no doubt navigating using the force ran over it and cut it lose. A couple of weeks ago the old mooring that sank a couple of years ago resurfaced, so I tied a new float to it to keep it from disappearing again and we used that for the balance of the season after dragging it out a little way to square it to the west and southwest a bit better.
There are some other things that we are discussing at the RC and when I have some more info I'll post it here again.