I wrote the following after hosting Sloop Champs last fall and had intended
to distribute it at the Winter meeting, but ended up not going. Its been
stilling on my computer for months and with Nationals around the corner I
felt like I might as well put it out there. I am open to personal responses,
but lets keep those from going back to the whole country and filling
everyone's inboxes.
Thanks,
Blake
Thoughts on Sloop Champs
The following are my thoughts on how Sloop Champs was run, what went well,
and what can be improved upon. Some of these are things we wanted to do all
along and didn't have the time/money/personnel, others we learned after the
fact. The choices that were made were based on what will make for the best
championship for the competitors; racing first, then hospitality, then
everything else.
Blake Billman
Regatta Chair
SEISA Graduate Director
*Registration:*
- We need to move to online registration for all ICSA championships and
semifinals. I can't imagine this is that hard to set up. Open registration
after we know who has qualified and allow teams to log on and put in their
information (much of this will be permanently logged for every team since
much of it won't change (school location, colors, mascot, etc). Same with
the documents that are required for registration.
- The registration fee for Sloop Champs should be increased to $100 (from
$75) for sloops since the host is required to provide 4 banquet tickets
regardless if the boats are sailed with 3 or 4. Even teams with 3 sailors
are bringing coaches now who we are feeding and providing with a powerboat.
At this event that loss (providing 4 at the cost of 3) came out to about a
$200 for the Boat Club. I'm not griping about the money, $200 isn't that
much when running a high level event, but it could have made a difference in
some of the areas I will mention or at the very least the food could have
been a little better. Maybe a 4-course meal instead of the 3 we had.
- I think the custom Google map was a huge success. I would have put even
more information on there if I had known it would be so widely used. This
should be a requirement for all future champs. It took me 10 minutes to set
up, and with more time it could have been even better.
- Things I would have liked to have done:
- We needed a better regatta logo. We just didn't invest any time or
money into this, but it should have been done.
- Better pre-assembled registration packets. The ones we had only
included SI's (x2), Course Diagram, Rotation Sheet (x2), Damage
Waiver, and
Program (x4). I would have liked to give every visiting team a
FWBC burgee,
but that's very expensive.
- I wanted a nicer, waterproof folder (preferably with the team Name
and regatta logo) to put everything in. Something that would last a while
that they could keep and use again. Laminated rotation sheets
that would fit
in a lifejacket pocket would have been nice also (time & $).
- I wanted bags and regatta shirts for everyone. We ended up doing the
shirts, embroidered polo's, but not the bags ($). Some kind of technical
(non cotton) shirt would have been cool, but again, money was the issue.
- I toyed with the idea of a handout for the skippers meeting. The
SI's cover most things, but there are some details they leave
out. We ended
up not doing the handout and I don't think anyone missed
anything; it just
would have cut down on the questions.
- Speaking of questions, people need to read SI's more thoroughly. 80%
of the questions we fielded in the skippers meeting had been in that
document and out on the web for a month. But I understand being thurough.
- I think fielding questions ahead of time through e-mail was a huge
success and actually helped us refine our race management
processes ahead of
time.
- I would suggest the ICSA Rep addressing questions at the skippers
meeting as well. This may have made things easier later on.
*Racing:*
- Course placement is critical (duh…), but it was more important and more
difficult than I anticipated. Here are a few of the problems we
experienced:
- Keeping the course the right length while still staying close enough
to the dock for a decent rotation.
- This became more difficult because as the wind increased both the
weather mark and the pin had to be moved closer to shore,
bringing the land
into play, something we did not want. The pin being too close to shore
(where you could not 1 tack to the weather mark) was a problem
in at least 2
races. I don't think it affected the results, but it was not the proper
thing and we wasted too much time moving the course to correct for this.
- You need 2 mark set boats, 1 isn't sufficient. (You would need 3 if
you ran a modified course)
- I would have liked to have a notice board on the RC boat to post
current standings after every race.
- The FWBC had the capability to map the position of each team at every
mark rounding in every race (these are then plotted on a line graph), but we
lacked the personnel to do it. Of course such information isn't much fun if
you can't share it in a timely manner, more on that later.
- The wind for race 8 was light and shifty, but not unmanageable. There
was a persistent oscillation that was quite evident, the 1st upwind was left
phase, the 1st downwind was right, by 15-20 degrees, so much so that all but
1 team went to the course right gate. Hawaii rounded left and moved from 7th
or 8th on the downwind up to 2nd when the breeze went back. Navy made the
mistake of not jibe setting at the last weather mark, as the wind had begun
to go back right. That is where they lost, not because of the light air. It
did die on their side first and fill from the right, but they had already
missed the shift. (The race did come out to exactly 40 minutes, the
specified length for a sloops)
- This was the poorest of all the races and in hindsight perhaps we
should have waited until the afternoon. I think 1 mediocre race
in 10 is a
good record, but you want to be 10 for 10 at Nationals. But with
the wind we
had on days 2 and 3 I think most will agree, we did well with what we had.
*Other: *
- I really wanted to do the live race blog, but needed a cellular
wireless card for my computer (expensive) and more personnel on RC to make
it happen. This would have allowed posting of results after every race, as
well as, the line graphs of the roundings. Thsi needs to be adressed so
that it is possibel fro all ICSA champs.
- I really believe that content like this is the best way to promote
collegiate racing and that the future of sailing media is
online. We need to
take serious steps to make the online content for the upcoming nationals
better than anything we have done in the past.
- We needed a dedicated person to file results from shore, me doing it
along with the other regatta chair duties was too much.
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