Last night I volunteered on the committee boat for Corinthian Yacht Clubs Wed night racing. I had been thinking about volunteering at the club in some way. I’m an associate member there and I’m always looking for ways to get closer to sailing. Charley the Wed night race director sent out a mail looking for volunteers and I was available so the stairs aligned.
Once you’ve got the committee boat ready, marks inflated, and Whalers fueled up you can head out to the course. Once Charley had established the starting area, the Whalers were dispatched to set the far and near windward and leeward marks. All the course are windward-leeward. The goal is to place the marks where Charley asks them to be (.08 and 1.0 mile away) and all of them inline with the prevailing wind. This is not as easy as it sounds. When the drivers in the Whalers are placing the marks they are lowering several hundred feet of rode to secure the anchor, but no such so that the mark sets in the current to be farther away from the committee boat. It seems like a real art to me. While that’s going on, the crew on the committee boat is checking in boats some of whom drive by the boat and some who you just have to pick out at the start. CYC doesn’t require a drive by before the starts, if they changed this it would make it easier. Anyway, while I was marking off boats, the rest of the crew was setting the race board with the fleet (P1, P2, P3, etc) and course directions. Courses are indicated by letters and vary from club to club. Here are the basic marks for CYC in Puget Sound:
Temporary Marks
- A Yellow mark to windward of the race committee boat
- B Yellow gybe mark
- C Yellow mark to leeward of the race committee boat
- S Orange mark near the race committee boat
- F Yellow mark near the race committee boat, on the opposite side of the race committee boat from mark "S"
- X Orange mark to windward of the race committee boat
- Y Orange gybe mark
- Z Orange mark located 0.2 miles or less upwind of the race committee boat
- U Orange mark located to leeward of the race committee boat
- N Yellow or orange mark 1 mile east of mid-channel VTS buoy "SF" off President Point.
note: The distances from the race committee boat to Marks A, B and C are generally longer than the distances to Marks X, Y, U.
So a course might read on the board like this: P1 P2 P3 SACACF indicating that fleets 1, 2, and 3 are using the same course. The Wednesday night has 8 fleets (if all the boats show up), we had two fleets with no boats but we ran the starting sequences anyway.
While some fleets are going to race the same course (same pattern) they all have their own start. Each fleet is identified from the committee boat by a pennant which corresponds to the nautical flag for that numeral. You can see examples of these flags online: Boats are run through starting sequences such that they have a set amount of time between starts during which the boats can jockey around for ideal starting position on their competition. This is normally done at 5 minute intervals, but on Wednesday nights they use a 3 minute start cycle that goes like this:
- 3 Minutes – Class flag goes Up – Short Horn
- 2 Minutes – Blue Shape goes Up – Short Horn
- 1 Minute – Blue Shape goes down – Long Horn
- 0 – Class Flag goes down, New Class Flag goes Up – Short Horn
Notice how right there at the end you’re lowering one flag and raising another. The start of one race begins the timing sequence for the next race. It seems pretty complicated and to be honest was a little confusing for the first few starts, but after a few it just makes sense.
Once all the boats have started its time to kick back, have some water, watch the racing, and in general enjoy the water. As the boats start to finish we all go back to work. There is one person who calls sail numbers as the cross the line and triggers the horn system which also pauses the timer display so the time for that boat can be written down. There are two people who sit facing the clock, each person is writing down sail numbers and times. You use two recorders to compensate for human error. Some times the boats are finishing close together and you might miss one time, the idea is that the other person probably got it. ;-)
That’s it really, the Whalers go and fetch the marks on the course, and you head back into the club house and have a beer. I’ll definitely be volunteering some more so I’ll share my learning along the way. I have some pictures to post to, but I don’t have my camera with me right now.