​The thick cloud at the dam this morning quickly burnt off to give us a lovely sunny day with a fairly steady southerly wind of about 5 knots and particularly smooth sailing conditions.

A rigs were the order of the day and a figure eight course was set around buoys 4-3-8 and 7.
Today’s winner was Lisa Blackwood whose result sheet included a couple of wins with a boat commandeered from Ricky! (The two wins in races 7 and 8 using boat 47 were credited to Lisa rather than Ricky.) Well sailed Lisa!

Second place was decided after count-back with John Murrell taking the position from John Cole-Cook  John Murrell is showing that he is hard to catch if he gets away at the start.

John Cole-Cook’s third place was particularly impressive as he featured in the placings last week but this week he did it from the maximum starting handicap of 70.  John told me that he has been working on tuning the Venti for boat-speed in light conditions and today was a good test.

Also worthy of congratulations today is Martin Svensen who is showing genuine improvement every time he sails and this week scoring his first race win in the final race of the day.

It is too early to comment on whether the changes to the handicap system are working but today we did see race winners from each end and the middle of the handicap range. In addition to this 16 out of the 17 skippers reached the podium at least once. Both are good signs.

Next Wednesday will be DF95 handicap racing at the dam and Sunday’s racing will be the Southern IOM Championship at Montrose. All the best to those skippers who have entered for this event.

John Hall mentioned to me that there have been some alterations made to upcoming fixtures in our race calendar so please consult the website calendar for updated information.

John S

​I was unable to watch the sailing today, but it was good to see we had a new member, Martin Svenson join us for the IOM Scratch. Welcome to the club, Martin. We hope you enjoyed the day and look forward to seeing you along on a regular basis. It's great to see the new members coming along for a sail. Martin joins both Justin Rogers and Andrew Price as newer members joining the Sunday sailing. Andrew didn't sail today, but did help with PRO duties, which was really appreciated. It allowed John Hall to join the action after race three (John PRO'd the initial three races). Andrew will hopefully be along a bit more with IOM days very soon.

Also great to see Les Hanson back on the water today. The first time he has sailed his IOM on a Sunday Scratch event since January 2020!!

Rod Jackman made his return also to Sunday sailing, returning from his winter hiatus on the big island. Sounded like he got rather accustomed to the warmer weather though, and was not too keen on our brisk morning today.

On to the sailing, and it was good to see that we had 13 sailors on deck today, with the results showing some really good competition throughout. 

Mat Gray and Lisa Blackwood fought it out for the top placings all day, with Mat coming through with the win for round 7, on 18 points. Lisa just one point behind in second spot. Both really consistently sailed today.

Rod Jackman, fresh from sunning himself on the northern island, took out third, with 37 points. Also a really consistent day.

I wont go through all the names, as it'd take ages, but was interesting to note the closeness within a few groups there, being 42, 46 and 52 points for one group and 65, 66, 69 points for the other. It shows that there was good competitive sailing throughout.

On handicap today, it was all about the Blitz's, with Andrew Wardrop and Rod Marshall both on 3 net points (Andrew seeded 10, finishing 7th and Rod seeded 11, finishing 8th) taking out first position, with Mathew Gray and new skipper, Martin Svenson both finishing in 3rd with 2 net points (Mathew ranked 3, finishing 1st and Martin ranked 13th, finishing 11th). A great spread of experience and ability there.

After sailing, the committee had their meeting, and amongst other business that will come out with the approved minutes, it was agreed to separately let members know of future improvements on facilities etc at the club.

The committee have put in for a new government grant, which will hopefully enable us much better access to water at the competition area. The application is in the vicinity of $50000, which will include a platform and steps down to the water on the DEC side of the sailing area. Rod Marshall was instrumental in putting this application together, and the club owes Rod a debt of gratitude for his time end effort in making this application such a detailed and hopefully, hard to refuse by the Dept of Sport and Rec. This is not 100% funded by the grant, and the committee has resolved to put forward the self funded amount as required to help get the grant approved.

We have also resolved to apply for a further grant to replace the Aluminium rescue boat. This is not due till november with outcome in February, so will be some time away yet. This will also attract a 20% self funded amount, should the application be successful.

Lastly, the committee have resolved to replace the unreliable motor on the Aluminium dinghy, and this will be done in the coming weeks.

Your committee is working hard to improve the level of access to the cometition areas and give members some great facilities to use into the future. We, as a club, have been very fortunate to have some funds to help us in this regard, and we have resolved to responsibly use an amount of these funds for the benefit of the membership, rather than have it all sitting in an account, not being used. That said, we will still have enough there for a rainy day as such, should that ever occur.

As always, if there are ane members with ideas that the committee should consider, please feel free to let either myself, or a committee member know about it and we will bring it forward at the next committee meeting.

Kyle

Today we began a trial of an alternative handicapping system. The plan is to run this system for about 5 weeks (IOM only) then decide whether or not it is an improvement.

A North-Wester with gusts exceeding 25 knots made for challenging sailing today at the dam.

Appropriate rig choice was important today. All skippers chose either their B or C rig at first and those with the C rig probably had the best from the mornings sailing. The winds moderated over lunch and B rigs were far more suitable as those who persisted with the C rig were well underpowered. 

A rotating PRO was used throughout the morning but after lunch John Murrell took on the duty. Thanks John and to the others who performed this task.

Just finishing all the races was important to doing well today. The winner was Rick Price who was consistently at the pointy end of the fleet. John Cole-Cook and Phil Jackman took out 2nd and 3rd place respectively separated only by a fraction of a point. Congratulations to all.

The new resetting rules for next week’s starting handicaps can be understood as follows:
The first four place-getters starting handicap is increased by 10 seconds. So Rick Price, John Cole-Cook, Phil Jackman and Andrew Wardrop all receive a 10 second increase to their handicap.

The last four place-getters have their handicap reduced by 10 seconds (if possible). The tally table shows that John Hall finished last today but John did not finish in more than half of the races so his handicap does not change and it means that as far as handicaps are concerned the bottom four who did finish enough races were John Murrell, Martin Svensen, Rod Jackman and Peter Webberley. All have their starting handicap reduced for next week.

For those who wish to read more onthe handicap system, further explanation is below the results picture. If anyone would like any further explanation about handicaps, or has any feedback that they would like to give then please feel free to contact me.

John Short

EXPLANATION OF THE NEW HANDICAP SYSTEM

Each week the starting handicap for every skipper is in the range 0 to 70 and is a simple multiple of 10 seconds. That is: Either 0, 10, 20, 30 40, 50, 60, or 70 seconds.

Each race a 10 second handicap penalty is applied to all of the podium place-getters (1st , 2nd and 3rd). All the place-getters also receive -2 bonus points to their series total as a sweetener to prevent sandbagging.

A maximum (on-the-day) handicap of 90 seconds is introduced to eliminate the problem of scratch skippers winning themselves to a handicap where they can no longer be competitive.

Handicaps are tracked by each skipper having a ‘fridge magnet’ with their name on it on a magnetic board. The board is divided into columns for each handicap 0 – 90. Each race the PRO moves all place getter’s magnets one column to the right.

To reset the starting handicaps for the following week:
 
If the event’s winner is NOT a scratch skipper, (ie is a skipper with a starting handicap of less than 70), then

•       The first four place-getters have 10 seconds added to their current starting handicap for next week. (To a maximum of 70.)
•       The bottom four place-getters have 10 seconds subtracted from their current starting handicap for next week. (To a minimum of 0.)
•       All other boats retain their previous starting handicap.
•       A skipper must finish in half of the races to qualify for an adjusted handicap.

 
But if a scratch skipper wins the day there is a ‘shake-down’ of handicaps and

•       The winner stays on 70 sec.
•       Skippers who finished 2nd, 3rd and 4th also retain their previous handicap.
•       All others have 10 seconds taken away from their starting handicap. (To a minimum of zero.)

 
This system could bring the following advantages:
 
It maintains the best features of the current system in that it;

•       Is still quick to correct a generous handicapped we should still find that on any day most skippers will reach the podium at least once.
•       Is still understandable, (and the magnetic board will be a good physical reference of what is going on.)
•       It will be computer based and free from human judgment or human error.

 
In addition:

•       It will not be as volatile. A skippers handicap will vary week to week by at most +/- 10 seconds.
•       The race PRO can judge early starters. (There is a mini-start every 10 seconds).
•       It is likely that you will be starting the race with others which will give practice at race starts and it also adds a competitive ‘race-within-a-race’ situation.
•       The back-markers are not handicapped out of contention if they win several races.
•       Handicaps are determined by the performance of each skipper alone and not tied to the performance of some other skipper.
•       The use of the magnetic board means that the race PRO does not make errors involving adding positive and negative numbers in the calculating of new handicaps.
•       The 0 to 70 second range for start of day handicaps means that all skippers have ample time to prepare for their start.

​An enthusiastic group of 16 skippers fronted up to a mill pond dam this morning, however by the time 11 am rolled around there was just the hint of breeze so racing commenced.

Good to see Kim Potter back racing 90.

With our intrepid Wednesday coordinato,r John Short having a quick break in the Whitsunday's, Chris Wood brought along his brother Andrew ( the good looking of the pair) who kindly handled the finishing line for us.

It would be nice to report that sailing conditions improved but that was not really the case with light conditions continuing interspersed with plenty of holes. 

Nevertheless, we had some close racing & managed to compete 9 races.

John Murrell & Rob Cooney had 2 wins each. Their consistently good results earning them first and second today respectively (John on 24 points and Rob on 27 points). Coming in third was Ray Joyce, with 31 points.

Interesting to note that 3rd place to 10th was separated by just 8 points.

Sundays sailing is RM Winter Scratch (round 6), starting at 10am
 
Andrew Wardrop

​Firstly, on behalf of the committee, I'd like to apologise to the sailors today. The timing of the start today got a bit mixed up and some turned up for a 10am start, with the remainder for an 11am start. The cause of this was that today was initially schedulled as a Long Distance Day and as such, started at 11am. After the DF95 nationals were cancelled, we allotted that Sunday as the Long Distance Day and shifted the DF95 day forward to today. All well and good, but we didn't change the original start time to our normal winter start. Apologies again, and all good for future weeks.

Now to today.

A good field of 11 skippers today, with Les Hanson able to have a sail for the first time in 18 months. Good to have you back on the water competing Les. In Les' absence with the Pro Duties, ken Dobbie stepped in and ran the day for us. Thanks for your help, Ken.

We got 12 races completed today, and looking at the results, we had seven of our eleven skippers sharing the spoils of individual victories.

In the end, David Jones was too consistent, taking the honours on the day with 25 points.

Second place was the ever consistent Mathew Gray, 4 points behind on 29.

Third place today - by countback - was Stuart Dawes, on 32 points.

On handicap today, we had Mathew Gray taking out top position with 5 rank diff points (seeded 7th and finishing 2nd). David Jones came in equal second with 4 rank diff points (seeded 5th and finishing 1st) along with Richard Fisher (seeded 10th and finishing 6th).

Wednesday is our usual IOM Mid Week Handicap, followed by RM Scratch next Sunday (at 10am)

Kyle

​The dam provided a very blustery North-Westerly today. Gusts of up to 25 knots and lulls of total calm made the sailing frustrating for most. While some skippers chose their A rig for the warm-up scratch races, all settled for B rigs by the time the handicap event began. It was a wise choice as some of the wind squalls were quite severe.

It was great to warmly welcome back Kim Potter to the fleet today after a rest over the winter period. We hope to see more of you Kim. 

The course was one that is becoming a bit of a standard for IOM’s in a North Wester: From the start to buoy 8, then a figure eight around the top four buoys, then down to the leeward gate and back to the finish. I am still surprised by the great effect that the last little leg from the gate to the finish can have. Today’s racing was no exception to this.

It was a really tight points table today. Wayne Behrens and John Cole Cook tied on 21 points to enforce a count-back. Both of the skippers had one 1st place, two 2nd places and one 3rd place. So it was their 5th best race that decided that John was today’s winner with Wayne taking second. Congratulations to both.

Matt Grey who dominated the morning’s sailing came in third just a single point ahead of John Hall.

Next Wednesday’s handicap will be IOM’s at the dam, while Sunday’s racing will a scratch event forDF95’s  at Montrose.

John S