OOD duty - no fun!

[Gin]

I am new to racing one and a bit seasons done, maybe 20 races total.

Club is great and has active racing etc.

However last week I went down only to find that we couldn't race and was collared to help the OOD on race duty. Third time this year, one practice, one where our boat was the ood and this. I have only raced about 6 times this year.

Anyway I get down tonight to be approached by 3 separate people to tell me there is a big upset as it appears that some of the results were wrong last week.

So I get hauled in after the race this evening for a formal enquiry in to what went wrong. Transpires that probably my dodgy handwriting and a mistaken time caused a problem so it has been amended.

Seems to me that I will never volunteer to help OOD again as getting lynched for making a mistake is not part of why I go sailing. Fine to adjust, but the tone of the enquiry should be along cheerful lines and not so formal.

People seem to complain about the race officers all the time. I would never complain as it is people doing it once a year and it is hardly the olympics!?!

Maybe I have got the wrong end of the stick but this sort of thing is incredibly off putting for me as a semi outsider. I half think I cant be bothered. Having said that most people in the club are extremely nice and aren't that precious.

What do you think - thin skin? Right? Its serious? Its not serious?

Cheers

Rob

Been there and done it too- a simply awful experience that one hopes never to have to endure again, so like you I avoided it whenever I could. There will always be the moaners, rightly or wrongly, so unless you have a thick enough skin don't risk spoiling what you do for pleasure and relaxation.

One club I was once a member of had a section for cadets, with parents of the same attitude as those touch line mentors who abuse referees and urge their little darlings on, the Optimist fleet was the most litigious and intolerant part of the club, and no doubt by now they feature amongst the adult moaners!

By contrast our club is a delight, as I would hope many others are too, as we race with determination but no recriminations if things go wrong and take a tolerant attitude to those who have less experience; we acknowledge that we are all out for a break from the humdrum of domestic life for a few hours and nobody wishes to spoil that.

Many new members are reluctant to get involved in racing as I suspect they see it as too challenging ( or perhaps too revealing of their abilities) but we try to overcome that reluctance by suggesting that they should regard our club racing as " cruising with attitude" in which they can hone their skills an enjoy a convivial meet-up after racing. If anyone should be thinking of lodging a protest this is deftly avoided, since we refuse to appoint a committee, by demanding that the parties sort it out amongst themselves and report the results to the Race Officer- oddly we don't get any moaners, nor come to think of it , any protests

A very relaxed environment with a low level of stress, further improved by a majority of pursuit races which eliminates the terrors of the mass start melee (actually I prefer the latter as I find the nail biter of constantly looking over my shoulder to see how badly I am performing as the fleet overtakes me even more stressful as my disappointment mounts!)

 

[lw395]

.....

....... If anyone should be thinking of lodging a protest this is deftly avoided, since we refuse to appoint a committee, by demanding that the parties sort it out amongst themselves and report the results to the Race Officer- oddly we don't get any moaners, nor come to think of it , any protests .....)

This attitude to protests can be very dangerous.
In some clubs it leads to people pushing their luck, knowing they will never be protested.
It then leads to increasing ignorance of the rules and the evolution of 'local rules'.
This tends to end in tears if any members learning their sailing in such a place venture further afield, or if any new members or visitors turn up.

 

[Seajet]

Some people, like me, avoid racing for several reasons, none of which are ' because it's too challenging ' !

I like sailing fast, but not around someone else's course.

It's quite common for established racers to pounce on new or non racing club members to work as OOD, rescue boats etc while the others get on with their fun.

I used to race dinghies in the winter, largely to have hot showers & food and rescue boats handy, it was fine for a couple of hours when the cruiser was out of the water and daylight was short and cold.

I sail to get away from it all, not to yell about protests etc; if that turns people on then fine, but they shouldn't shanghai other people to do the boring admin stuff, let alone moan if they don't like the way they've done it.

 

[Gin]

This attitude to protests can be very dangerous.
In some clubs it leads to people pushing their luck, knowing they will never be protested.
It then leads to increasing ignorance of the rules and the evolution of 'local rules'.
This tends to end in tears if any members learning their sailing in such a place venture further afield, or if any new members or visitors turn up.

A valid point of view I'm sure for some clubs but not ours- horses for courses and not offered as a panacea

 

[Birdseye]

This attitude to protests can be very dangerous.
In some clubs it leads to people pushing their luck, knowing they will never be protested.
It then leads to increasing ignorance of the rules and the evolution of 'local rules'.
This tends to end in tears if any members learning their sailing in such a place venture further afield, or if any new members or visitors turn up.

I can understand where you are coming from but I dont think you are right. I was OODing this weekend for a regatta with two starts for the two handicap classes IRC and NHC. At every start the main "chancing" was in the IRC fleet which almost always is where the protests come from. We had one general recall with half the fleet over the start line shouting at each other. The NHC starts were much more orderly, much more "after you Cecil no after you Claude" and we get almost no protests from them in the sailing year. The difference is obviously in how serious they take their racing. These days neither fleet seem to go further afield for their racing very much.

 

[franksingleton]

Deleted. Posted in error.