Round the Island Race frustration

[ChrisN]

Has anybody else been stymied by the Island Sailing Club when trying to ask them to review their start line timings. This years RTIR was disastrous for many Group 6, 7 and 8 boats who failed to make the Hurst narrows before the tide turned. A submission by me to the RTIR forum has not been posted and I instead received a generic reply from Laura Mills at the ISC.
The bones of my post were this :-

"I am disappointed that my post to the forum has not yet appeared over 72 hours after it was posted . I am further disappointed that your comprehensive response appears generic, perhaps due to number of complaints received.

Your response also fails to acknowledge that the efforts of the ISC appear to be biased towards the "headline" boats whilst appearing to ignore the fact that majority of boats taking part are predominately club racers whose only "big" race of the year is the RTIR. 60% (over 300) of the retirees (& NOD) in this years race came from groups 6, 7 and 8 with group 8 being almost half this number. As I said in my, unpublished, forum post, all of these boats had paid an entry fee and were surely due some consideration. All entrants have to supply contact details and were presumably therefore contactable to modify start times, perhaps by amalgamating similar groups.
I appreciate that I have little comprehension of the logistics of organising an event on the scale of the RTIR but, as an ex salesman, it would seem that you risk alienating a substantial proportion of your competitors just so that the crews on boats which can make it round in under 10 hours can get a relative lie-in. "

Any thoughts?

 

[flaming]

I think you have to balance that with the fact that the first 55 boats on overall IRC came from the slowest group.
And the 2 boats that finished in ISC 8D were 1st and 4th overall in ISC.

From the fastest ISC group the group winner was a mere 30th overall, and second place was 112th. Oh, and that 30th place boat was a Mumm 36, so god only knows what it was doing in ISC...
Group 7 (second slowest ISC group) provided the majority of the top 20 overall under ISC.

It was undoubtedly a small boat race this year. On that basis it's hard to justify your accusation that the race is biased towards the larger boats.

However, it's 50 miles around the island. In light winds it is a huge task to get round in a small boat. We who race a lot accept that you don't finish every race that you start, because we are doing a sport that requires assistance from the weather. And yes, boats that are slower in light winds are disproportionately affected by that.

it's hard to see what the ISC could really do to make it more likely for the smaller boats to get round, that wouldn't create other issues in "normal" or heavy air races. For example, they could reverse the start times and send the small boats off first. To an extent they already do this by sending the gaffers off early, but they are few in number... But in a 20+ knot beat to the needles this would be utter carnage with the big boats coming through the large numbers of small boats...
Compressing the starts by having only a 5 minute gap could be an option, but I think that every year the fleet proves itself incapable of all crossing the start line within 5 minutes of their start.... So you'd make the race officer's job extremely difficult in judging who is over, and who is actually from the previous start...
Moving the starts earlier... It takes 2 hours to get the fleet away, and ideally you don't want to start anyone into the last of the flood because if you do you'll have (and have had) the big boats complaining somewhat justifiably of bias towards the smaller boats in the results. So the most you are ever going to have for the last start is about 3.5 hours of Ebb to get to the Needles. Sometimes, with a light headwind that's going to be difficult, but I'm not really sure what you want the ISC to do about it?

 

[bedouin]

Just look at the figures for the boats that finished in the smallest classes - only a very small proportion did that confirms the OPs assertion that the start time is hard on the smaller boats. As one who has competed in the smallest ISC fleet I have experienced that myself. Interestingly when I did it competing as IRC rather than ISC gave a better start time but I don't know if that is the case now.

In average wind the traditional start times work pretty well but in lighter winds then small boats suffer disproportionately as they get caught by the hurst gate. There would be an argument for bringing all start times forwards so that the smallest class started 30-60 minutes earlier (relative to HW) but I don't think it would be feasible to alter the start time at short notice - just too complex with so many competitors.

 

[flaming]

Just look at the figures for the boats that finished in the smallest classes - only a very small proportion did that confirms the OPs assertion that the start time is hard on the smaller boats. As one who has competed in the smallest ISC fleet I have experienced that myself. Interestingly when I did it competing as IRC rather than ISC gave a better start time but I don't know if that is the case now.

Yes, the last starts are all ISC.

In average wind the traditional start times work pretty well but in lighter winds then small boats suffer disproportionately as they get caught by the hurst gate. There would be an argument for bringing all start times forwards so that the smallest class started 30-60 minutes earlier (relative to HW) but I don't think it would be feasible to alter the start time at short notice - just too complex with so many competitors.

As mentioned the issue with this is that pushing the first starts into a time where there is little or no fair tide at the start does, in normal years, skew the race even further in favour of the small boats than it already is.
When all is said and done, if you were just off for a sail around the island in a small boat you would not have chosen the 7th of July this year as a suitable weather window.

It is quite noticeable that when classes are cancelled because of strong winds, the ISC does not attract the same level of criticism. Light winds are just another form of unsuitable weather for small boats to sail around the island.

 

[bedouin]

It is quite noticeable that when classes are cancelled because of strong winds, the ISC does not attract the same level of criticism. Light winds are just another form of unsuitable weather for small boats to sail around the island.

AFAIK ISC are not responsible for the wind strength. However they are responsible for the start times and the issue here is not the light winds themselves but the light winds in combination with a late start time.

And I think you are wrong about it being inherently biased to the small boats - IIRC last year was won by the larger boats.

 

[flaming]

AFAIK ISC are not responsible for the wind strength. However they are responsible for the start times and the issue here is not the light winds themselves but the light winds in combination with a late start time.

Granted, but the maximum they could be brought forward would give the last start 3.5 hours to get to the needles. If you look at the tracker for the last group, most of them still wouldn't have made it with an extra half hour of fair tide. It's unfortunate, but there just are some weather conditions where a significant number of small boats are really going to struggle to get round whatever you do....

And I think you are wrong about it being inherently biased to the small boats - IIRC last year was won by the larger boats.

Last year was won by Yes! which is not a big boat, it's 36 foot. Last year was also a complete anomaly, as medium sized boats "never win", yet Salvo and a couple of others were also right up there. This was, if I recall, partly due to the wind building after the majority of the large boats had finished, but also shifting later so that where Yes! had a fetch up the solent to the finish the small boats were beating.
Even so, a very small boat was 6th....

Small boats win more years than big boats. There is some evidence that this is less than in years gone past in strong wind years as the ability of the large boats to plane down the back of the island can mitigate the tidal advantage that the small boats get. But still, it's notorious as a small boat race, there are people out there who own shiny new race boats who also own a folkboat or Contessa 32 that they've bought with the aim of winning the Gold Roman bowl.

 

[bedouin]

Granted, but the maximum they could be brought forward would give the last start 3.5 hours to get to the needles. If you look at the tracker for the last group, most of them still wouldn't have made it with an extra half hour of fair tide. It's unfortunate, but there just are some weather conditions where a significant number of small boats are really going to struggle to get round whatever you do....

Why is that the maximum? Why not bring if forward another 30mins to 1hour?

This is not really about winning but allowing the smaller boats to take part. They are charged a lot to enter - I think it is the same amount as the big boats - yet they are unable to complete the course because of the ISC rules

BTW when was the last time a boat from smallest ISC class (and we are talking about ISC classes here, IRC get a better deal) won the Gold Roman Bowl?

 

[flaming]

Why is that the maximum? Why not bring if forward another 30mins to 1hour?

This is not really about winning but allowing the smaller boats to take part. They are charged a lot to enter - I think it is the same amount as the big boats - yet they are unable to complete the course because of the ISC rules

Because you cannot send the first starts into foul tide. They tried that once, and it didn't give good racing. As it is the earliest starts are normally in very minimal fair tide. Plus of course the early starting gaffers possibly couldn't actually make any headway in light winds against foul tide.

BTW when was the last time a boat from smallest ISC class (and we are talking about ISC classes here, IRC get a better deal) won the Gold Roman Bowl?

Never, they don't race for the Gold Roman Bowl.

The Gold roman bowl is the prize for the IRC classes. The Silver Gilt Roman bowl is the prize for the ISC classes. It is also normally won by a boat from the smaller classes.
(2016 and 2017 being exceptions, when for some reason Antilope - a very well sailed GS37 with a full suit of carbon race sails who normally race IRC and kick my arse - entered the ISC class and to nobody's great surprise won it)

 

[Sailorsam101]

Is anybody really surprised by this/ This is not the first time that half the field missed the tide at Hurst. I was there years ago and had the same issue.

Sailing clubs and such big events are there to make money for various reasons.

So a late tide start...light winds....what did you expect?

Like i said i've been there before years ago.

 

[savageseadog]

The obvious thing to do is make the course shorter

 

[Sailorsam101]

Or go the other way around..that might help?????

 

[lw395]

Just look at the figures for the boats that finished in the smallest classes - only a very small proportion did that confirms the OPs assertion that the start time is hard on the smaller boats. As one who has competed in the smallest ISC fleet I have experienced that myself. Interestingly when I did it competing as IRC rather than ISC gave a better start time but I don't know if that is the case now.

In average wind the traditional start times work pretty well but in lighter winds then small boats suffer disproportionately as they get caught by the hurst gate. There would be an argument for bringing all start times forwards so that the smallest class started 30-60 minutes earlier (relative to HW) but I don't think it would be feasible to alter the start time at short notice - just too complex with so many competitors.

I suspect the main reason smaller boats did not finish is that they decided not to carry on. Not that it was impossible for them to finish in the conditions which actually unfolded during the day, but their perception by the time they got to about Yarmouth, was that they would rather go home than try to carry on.

How many retirees actually kept racing to the best of their ability and ran out of time?
How many would have finished had they carried on?

The ISC already takes a lot of liberties with the racing rules, but bringing a start time forwards from what's in the NOR would expose them to redress hearings and accusations of gerrymandering the results.

I've not met any small boat racers who actually stuck it out to the end who have a grievance.
I've met a couple of people who were on a boat which ran out of time around Seaview, I think they'll be back next year.

If you look at the boatspeed implications of boats failing to get to the Needles in this years event, you will realise that the real options were to carry on as the ISC did, or cancel the event due to light weather. A lot of other clubs cancelled their racing that weekend, a lot of races have been cancelled/abandoned this summer.
Is that what you want?
Alternatively the ISC could say, the slow boats are not getting a fair deal, they are more trouble than they are worth, let's limit the entry to 'faster than an Impala' or some other random criterion. The trouble is, good sailors in boats rated 'slow' got around with time to spare.

 

[lw395]

Or go the other way around..that might help?????

Nope. In general, that's been tried (Industry Challenge among others), there is good reason to call it 'the wrong way around the IoW'.
OTOH, if you are wanting to view the back of the Wight on a sunny day, smart people start from Yarmouth. Or so I'm told.

 

[Triassic]

The trouble is, good sailors in boats rated 'slow' got around with time to spare.

And herin lies the rub.....

At the risk of getting completely beaten up here dare I suggest that in order to have made the Hurst "gate" this year in one of the later starting smaller boats you had to be a half reasonable sailor capable of consistently getting say 90% out of the performance of your boat. It follows that if you are such a good sailor and make the gate you are actually in with quite a good chance of doing well overall, something which, as Flaming points out, happens quite a bit and certainly did this year. If on the other hand you are only an occasional racer and don't quite cut the mark, and perhaps that describes a fairly large percentage of the sailors making up the later entrants, you're not going to make the gate and and more likely not to stick it out..... hence the large number of retirements from those groups.

Quite a lot of this discussion was had on the other thread about RTI entrants, and I entered that discussion holding the view they should have sent the small boats off earlier. By the time that discussion ended I understood why they do it the way they do and had changed my viewpoint. These guys have been running this race for a long time, they do seem to know what they are doing.

 

[lw395]

And herin lies the rub.....

At the risk of getting completely beaten up here dare I suggest that in order to have made the Hurst "gate" this year in one of the later starting smaller boats you had to be a half reasonable sailor capable of consistently getting say 90% out of the performance of your boat. It follows that if you are such a good sailor and make the gate you are actually in with quite a good chance of doing well overall, something which, as Flaming points out, happens quite a bit and certainly did this year. If on the other hand you are only an occasional racer and don't quite cut the mark, and perhaps that describes a fairly large percentage of the sailors making up the later entrants, you're not going to make the gate and and more likely not to stick it out..... hence the large number of retirements from those groups. .......

I suspect part of the problem is that a large slice of cruising boat sailors very rarely attempt to sail in very light winds these days. We have a culture of firing up the diesel whenever we can't make 4 or 5 knots. So people are trying to keep their boats moving in a mode they are not ever so familiar with, under difficult circumstances with a lot going on around them, a lot of interaction with other yachts etc.
Possibly coupled with many slower rated yachts being hulls poorly designed for light airs performance, and rigs which don't work very well in light air, a boat which is capable of putting up a reasonable time (for a cruiser) in F3-F5 becomes hard to sail at all in F1.
I can understand people in these circumstances sensibly giving up on the basis that the day was not going to be much fun for them if they persevered.

 

[Iain C]

I'm another one who thinks the start time was too late. I appreciate some of the challenges the ISC have, but part of the issue is the cutoff time is always fixed, yet the start times change massively, which can make all the difference. I called out for a potential A and B start time to be announced at 1800 on the Friday...A being the standard time, B being earlier to give slower boats more of a chance at Hurst. And if the really quick stuff has to punch a bit of foul tide, so be it...they are still not going to get beaten by some bloke in a Centaur are they? Please let me know if I've got this wrong, but the really quick stuff is essentially a separate race to the ISCRS stuff, right, so if they are punching tide so what? I guess it just depends if the ISC want to set a race that is super fair so people can win the Bowl, or if they want to run the biggest race and maximise revenue. Winning or taking part...simple.

And I think we need to get away from this "big boat/small boat" stuff. I don't profess to be the worlds best yacht racer...far from it...but as a pretty handy dinghy racer I can get my boat going reasonably well. However, in sub 5kts my boat goes like a turd, yet a Sonata will go very nicely indeed thanks (as even the commentators say on the RTIR video). It's no different in dinghies...in no wind and Solent chop a Fireball is the stickiest, slappiest slowest thing, yet when it's 25kts and other boats are hiding in the boat park we'll be flying. It's all well and good pointing out that the small stripped out Sonatas, 3di Contessas and the like all did well, but the bottom line is that if 90% of the purple fleet couldn't make Hurst, then things should at least be looked at, and the OP's question to the ISC at least answered. Sounds like the ISC forum is somewhat censored...not a good thing IMHO.

 

[flaming]

I suspect part of the problem is that a large slice of cruising boat sailors very rarely attempt to sail in very light winds these days. We have a culture of firing up the diesel whenever we can't make 4 or 5 knots. So people are trying to keep their boats moving in a mode they are not ever so familiar with, under difficult circumstances with a lot going on around them, a lot of interaction with other yachts etc.
Possibly coupled with many slower rated yachts being hulls poorly designed for light airs performance, and rigs which don't work very well in light air, a boat which is capable of putting up a reasonable time (for a cruiser) in F3-F5 becomes hard to sail at all in F1.
I can understand people in these circumstances sensibly giving up on the basis that the day was not going to be much fun for them if they persevered.

Indeed. As I said elsewhere on a 37 foot C/R that is a lot better than most tubby cruisers in the light, but by IRC standards is terrible in the light.... The 11 hours it took us was right on the border of fun and endurance.
It was actually the tracker that kept me going... Everytime we stopped I fired up the tracker and found we were still in the top 3 in class... Couldn't bring myself to give up when a good result was on the cards. If we'd been at the back I'm pretty sure I'd have fired up the engine and gone home...

 

[bedouin]

What ISC - and some posters - seem to forget is that for the vast majority of competitors, particularly in the smaller ISC classes, RTIR is about fun not serious racing. People going on about 37ft IRC C/R are in a different world, that is not small by most people's standards and IRC get better start times anyway.

I am sure RTIR is an introduction to racing for many skippers so by discriminating against them as clearly as ISC does must be putting off numbers from progressing to more serious racing.

I know ISC has limited room for manoeuvre but I think they should be able to bring the start time for the smaller boats forwards 30-60 mins to make it more fun for all.

 

[lw395]

I'm another one who thinks the start time was too late. I appreciate some of the challenges the ISC have, but part of the issue is the cutoff time is always fixed, yet the start times change massively, which can make all the difference. I called out for a potential A and B start time to be announced at 1800 on the Friday...A being the standard time, B being earlier to give slower boats more of a chance at Hurst. And if the really quick stuff has to punch a bit of foul tide, so be it...they are still not going to get beaten by some bloke in a Centaur are they? Please let me know if I've got this wrong, but the really quick stuff is essentially a separate race to the ISCRS stuff, right, so if they are punching tide so what? I guess it just depends if the ISC want to set a race that is super fair so people can win the Bowl, or if they want to run the biggest race and maximise revenue. Winning or taking part...simple.

And I think we need to get away from this "big boat/small boat" stuff. I don't profess to be the worlds best yacht racer...far from it...but as a pretty handy dinghy racer I can get my boat going reasonably well. However, in sub 5kts my boat goes like a turd, yet a Sonata will go very nicely indeed thanks (as even the commentators say on the RTIR video). It's no different in dinghies...in no wind and Solent chop a Fireball is the stickiest, slappiest slowest thing, yet when it's 25kts and other boats are hiding in the boat park we'll be flying. It's all well and good pointing out that the small stripped out Sonatas, 3di Contessas and the like all did well, but the bottom line is that if 90% of the purple fleet couldn't make Hurst, then things should at least be looked at, and the OP's question to the ISC at least answered. Sounds like the ISC forum is somewhat censored...not a good thing IMHO.

No the bottom line is that 90% or whatever of the purple fleet didn't pass Hurst, it is simply untrue that most have them could not have carried on. They chose not to.
If you enter a race in a boat that sails like a turd, what do you expect?

As for the 'is it a serious race for the winners, or is it for everyone?' it's both. It's like the London Marathon. It operates across levels. You don't expect the London Marathon to start at 1AM for the top guys to avoid the no-hopers getting tired do you? It's not some politically correct equal ops egg and spoon race where nobody loses.
These things are a challenge and there is always a chance you won't finish if things don't go your way. There is no shame in having a go and knowing when to chuck it in until next year.

There is also the point I made in the other thread. If you can't average enough VMG to get to the Needles in that much fair tide, then you must be spending a lot of time without steerage way. There is a lower wind limit where things get silly. If it's too light to control your boat, you shouldn't be racing. But why should that stop those people who do have control of their boats?

 

[flaming]

What ISC - and some posters - seem to forget is that for the vast majority of competitors, particularly in the smaller ISC classes, RTIR is about fun not serious racing. People going on about 37ft IRC C/R are in a different world, that is not small by most people's standards and IRC get better start times anyway.

That was literally my point... I was in a 37 foot cruiser racer that's a lot better than most of the ISC classes in the light, we had fair tide all the way to the needles and it took 11 hours and was frankly right on the limit of being fun.

For those in smaller or slower boats who took the decision to not continue past Hurst the overwhelming tale is "it was going to take too long and wouldn't have been fun". And yes, I have talked to quite a few... Could a large number of them have continued and finished... Clearly yes. The boat that won the prize for being last to finish didn't pass the Needles until 1400, and they were not alone.
Would they have had fun....? Maybe not...

What you need to do if you think ISC have this wrong is suggest an alternative. I've outlined why bringing the start times forward is not really a good idea, so what else do you suggest?