What price Safety?

[yoda]

Just being nosey!
How did the event go? Did the "enhanced" requirements get used and was the number of participants up or down on previous years?

We did set our races as Cat 3 with liferaft although we did have a Cat 4 class in one coastal race with some strict weather forecast limits to give entrants a choice. We only had 1 entry for the Cat 4 class and although the numbers for the Cat 3 class were slightly down it wasn't a disaster. As expected a number of people objected and chose not to enter but frankly I don't think they actually read the requirements and understood what was on offer. There is a significant level of politics in all of this however you can't walk back on a risk assessment without a material change to justify it. We will be sticking to our guns! Our single handed races also run as Cat 3 plus liferaft were actually up in numbers of entries on last year.

 

[flaming]

Out of interest... did you scrutinise the entrants for compliance with Cat 3?

 

[Ingwe]

We did set our races as Cat 3 with liferaft although we did have a Cat 4 class in one coastal race with some strict weather forecast limits to give entrants a choice. We only had 1 entry for the Cat 4 class and although the numbers for the Cat 3 class were slightly down it wasn't a disaster. As expected a number of people objected and chose not to enter but frankly I don't think they actually read the requirements and understood what was on offer. There is a significant level of politics in all of this however you can't walk back on a risk assessment without a material change to justify it. We will be sticking to our guns! Our single handed races also run as Cat 3 plus liferaft were actually up in numbers of entries on last year.

The other large reason numbers were always going to be down was that the race was effectively held 1 week earlier than normal which meant that most of the bigger boats from Plymouth (that are all Cat 3 and above compliant ie have done Fastnet races) were all at Dartmouth Regatta that weekend.

 

[yoda]

The other large reason numbers were always going to be down was that the race was effectively held 1 week earlier than normal which meant that most of the bigger boats from Plymouth (that are all Cat 3 and above compliant ie have done Fastnet races) were all at Dartmouth Regatta that weekend.

Indeed, One of the issues that comes from the PPSA deconfliction process.

 

[yoda]

No. We trust in the honesty of skippers who sign to say the boat complies.

 

[bbg]

No. We trust in the honesty of skippers who sign to say the boat complies.

So after all the effort to do a proper risk analysis, you make no effort to ensure it is complied with?

Wouldn't it have been easier to trust the skippers to ensure that their boats are adequately equipped for the conditions they might face?

 

[flaming]

No. We trust in the honesty of skippers who sign to say the boat complies.

Having been through scrutineering for the IRC Europeans, which was cat 3, and seen first hand the amount of issues that were found when that whole fleet knew that they were going to get checked... I think the chances of all your skippers actually having fully Cat 3 compliant boats is basically zero.

 

[rams2020]

£90.

 

[Muddy32]

So after all the effort to do a proper risk analysis, you make no effort to ensure it is complied with?

Wouldn't it have been easier to trust the skippers to ensure that their boats are adequately equipped for the conditions they might face?

Most SIs say that 3rd party Insurance is held. Rarely checked or details asked for. On trust.

 

[bbg]

Most SIs say that 3rd party Insurance is held. Rarely checked or details asked for. On trust.

But this is different. The club apparently did an actual risk assessment, and determined to move the race up one category compared to what one would expect. Taking the trouble to do the risk assessment and then not checking that it has been complied with seems strange. I would have thought that part of the risk assessment would be to ask the question, "having determined the safety equipment requirements, what steps will we take to ensure they are complied with?"

 

[yoda]

But this is different. The club apparently did an actual risk assessment, and determined to move the race up one category compared to what one would expect. Taking the trouble to do the risk assessment and then not checking that it has been complied with seems strange. I would have thought that part of the risk assessment would be to ask the question, "having determined the safety equipment requirements, what steps will we take to ensure they are complied with?"

No other club in the port checks that craft comply with the requirements of the SIs so why would we wish to do so? What people don't see is that some elements of the ORC category such as stability requirements are checked. The task of checking all boats for all elements is massive and therefore there has to be some element of trust. While I know some very major events do have full checks of all boats I don't think any club racing is subject to that kind of inspection.

Yoda