A day at the Races
Tonight I volunteered on the North Star Sail Club Race Committee boat. NSSC (https://northstarsail.org) is our new home/Twoflower's new home, and Chuck, Feather and I have been trying to learn the ropes...er...lines, and find our place in the club.
The new summer race series started tonight, and I thought I'd go out on the race committee boat and see what this was all about. It's one of the many service options available to members in this volunteer-led organization.
I've seen the races on the lake when Chuck and I have been out on kayaks or out on our boats, and I've never had any personal desire to race. but I got caught up in the excitement of the Mackinac race this year since we "knew" so many more people racing. And hanging out on a boat for four hours seems a relatively easy way to accumulate service hours. Why not?
Several of us newbies were welcomed onto the RC boat by the RC committee tonight; some of them were from racing crews who were each asked to send at least one person onto the committee. boat for one race this season. And then a couple of others like me had never raced and were just checking it out.
I thought the the race committee members gave excellent instructions. I learned a lot. I will likely get some of this wrong, but here's what I learned/experienced:
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| Baker getting ready to leave the dock |
We headed out onto the lake at 6 pm in the RC boat. Races start at 7 pm-ish. The captain tonight was Baker, the RC Chair. He gave excellent clear instructions about what our jobs were.
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| Crews preparing at NSSC as the RC boat heads out on the lake |
The start buoy is semi-permanently anchored out in the lake (with all appropriate permits), but the actual race course isn't chosen until conditions are determined by the RC. Tonight, the committee chose the PH1 course (out to the south of us and back).
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| Looking a the start buoy |
The first job of the committee is to create a starting line (which for tonight's race was also a finish line), by anchoring out a short distance from the start buoy, 90° to the wind direction. We measured wind direction with this little "gun" thing that I'm pretty sure Darla called a "wind chicken". This seemed to be a weather vane on a stick attached to a bearing compass. You held the gun like device up pointed directly at the wind (so the vane was parallel to the stick) and read your bearing from the compass. We lined the boat up 90° to the wind direction and set anchor (one of the jobs given to the newbies).
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| Determining the wind direction |
The next job of the committee is to "check-in" the boats (to make sure no boat is left out on the water). Preferably, the racing boats make a pass of the RC boat to check in, but that didn't always happen so we were out with binoculars looking (into the sun) for boat names and sail numbers. Several of us newbs were watching and calling out boat names, until all but one of the boats had checked in. There was one late registrant, and one missing registrant, so in total 29 boats raced in 6 different classes. Pam, a longtime committee member, had printed scratch sheets of the registered boats in their classes and the race committee members explained how records are kept.
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Race Classes
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| 645 pm: the Gathering |
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| Audacious |
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| Mr Bill's Wild Ride |
Start times were staggered for each class with start times 5 minutes apart for each class. We started right on time (apparently a rare feat). The slowest class goes first, with fast and faster boats starting later and later. (It's sort of a handicap system). Each participating class has its own color start flags which can not be displayed outside the RC boat early or we have to postpone and reset. Two newbs worked in sync to display these in the right orderwith Baker calling out very clear instructions. As each flag goes up, the racers in that class jockey for position near the start line for 5 minutes before the horn sounds. This could get quite exciting as we (The RC Boat) were one corner of the start line.
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| Xcessive and Audacious jockey for position in PHRF-A |
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| PHRF B taking off in a pack |
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| Crazy Train and Wild Life make a very close pass |
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| Racing Storm gets in the Mix |
As each class left, the race committee had to keep an eye out for boats crossing early which would incur a penalty, and to make sure that all boats in each class actually started the race.
And then we waited. Sometimes the RC boat has to move but for the PH1 course, the start line is the finish line.
Finally we could see the beautiful multi-colored spinnakers coming towards us. (I wish I'd had my real camera and not just my phone.... next time.
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| Spinnakers up |
We had someone assigned to call out sail numbers/boat names, someone to judge exactly when they crossed the finish line (one person for consistency), someone to call out time, and three people (including me) recording these stats to make sure we were all consistent. I volunteered for this job because I used to like to keep baseball/softball stats.
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| my race sheet |
There was a pretty steady stream of boats coming in after the first, all in the 8 o'clock hour. As the boats crossed the finished line, as time allowed I snapped some shots of them heading in to a beautiful sunset.
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| Baker explains something...clearly I wasn't listening |
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| back up the river to celebrate a job well done |
Meanwhile back at the ranch, there were burgers on the grill and the bar was open (staffed by volunteers).
I chose to help Baker record the stats on the computer when Pam and Darla got stuck behind the bar.
If you're a NSSC member and you haven't helped Race Committee out, I highly recommend it. Don't worry about not knowing what you're doing (I didn't). Many hands make light work.
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