Plymouth Offshor Racing

[yoda]

We (RNSA Plymouth Branch) continue to try and encourage offshore racing (more than a day sail) from Plymouth however it seems to be impossible to encourage people to go further than Dartmouth or Falmouth. We run IRC, NHC and a 2 handed NHC class but take up seems to be reducing by the year. Are we just not getting the word out to the right people or is it a common problem?

Next race is on 23 July to Roscoff, if anybody is interested just PM me for details.

Interested to hear from the racers out there.

Yoda

 

[adwuk]

Just started sailing out of Plymouth (Mayflower) with our enthusiastic youngsters, who are keen dinghy sailors - I know that they would love to start racing, but at the moment we are simply working our way around the coast with the time we have available. That said, they loved the Salcombe to Plymouth run we had last Friday Easterly, 20 knots, fair tide, and all done in a little over 2 hours. The Nic 35 we bought is not a racing machine, but I'm pretty convinced the spinnaker has seen more use in the last month than the previous 35 years! So, yes, I am sure that we would be interested in offshore racing - but we are bulding up to it.

 

[Birdseye]

We (RNSA Plymouth Branch) continue to try and encourage offshore racing (more than a day sail) from Plymouth however it seems to be impossible to encourage people to go further than Dartmouth or Falmouth. We run IRC, NHC and a 2 handed NHC class but take up seems to be reducing by the year. Are we just not getting the word out to the right people or is it a common problem?

Next race is on 23 July to Roscoff, if anybody is interested just PM me for details.

Interested to hear from the racers out there.

Yoda

Cant help but think you ought to be going through old entry lists and phoning those who have dropped out to find out why. The Falmouth lot seem to get a reasonable attendance for races to France and back though I must admit I do not know whether it is declining.

IN short distance racing we are seeing a steady decline in IRC and a growth in NHC. The NHC lot would be less interested in longer offshore races

 

[Ingwe]

It is partly an advertising problem, I generally enter the RNSA September race to Salcombe each year but never hear anything about any of the other races as an example for the weekend of the Solo race to Salcombe this year I actually did a quick search online the week before to see if there were any races on and couldn't find anything of interest so we cruised around to Salcombe only to be rafted up outside the entire RNSA fleet in the bag.

The more serious problem for the cross channel races though is that there are very few race boats (monohulls) within the port that are easily set up for Cat 3 races and even fewer with younger owners (and by younger I mean under 60) I can think of fewer than 10 boats that fall within those two criteria within the port and pretty much all of the owners of those boats have jobs that mean that they would struggle to take the time off work to do a cross channel race that was starting on a Thursday night. I suspect that a Friday night start would be easier for most people but I still doubt too many boats would be prepared to spend out on setting up for Cat 3 each year just for one or two races.

 

[yoda]

It is partly an advertising problem, I generally enter the RNSA September race to Salcombe each year but never hear anything about any of the other races as an example for the weekend of the Solo race to Salcombe this year I actually did a quick search online the week before to see if there were any races on and couldn't find anything of interest so we cruised around to Salcombe only to be rafted up outside the entire RNSA fleet in the bag.

The more serious problem for the cross channel races though is that there are very few race boats (monohulls) within the port that are easily set up for Cat 3 races and even fewer with younger owners (and by younger I mean under 60) I can think of fewer than 10 boats that fall within those two criteria within the port and pretty much all of the owners of those boats have jobs that mean that they would struggle to take the time off work to do a cross channel race that was starting on a Thursday night. I suspect that a Friday night start would be easier for most people but I still doubt too many boats would be prepared to spend out on setting up for Cat 3 each year just for one or two races.

Thanks for your reply which helps in pinpointing one of the issues to resolve - advertising. We do start the Bank holiday weekend races on a Friday evening however where is isn't a bank holiday we normally start on a Thursday evening to allow time in port before a return in time for starting work on a Monday. I think there are plenty of boats in Plymouth capable of doing a cross channel race and getting to Cat 3 isn't too difficult but I guess the stuff on Liferafts and lifejackets can be a bit off putting until you analyse the requirements carefully. If we could get upto around 20 boats, twice a year it would be a great improvement.

Yoda