Another club closure

Been sailing pursuits for 30 years and I can count on the fingers of one hand problem races  . When you can have the odd problem is if a race officer misses a lap out somewhere . The problem normally is just most race officers just are not used to running pursuits .

Sorry I am still with Rupert on this point.   Though I do understand it’s a lot  more difficult managing finish’s on the sea than it is on a puddle in the midlands . 

Edited by Grumpycat - 23 May 22 at 9:33pm

I've always enjoyed pursuits, I club race more often than not so it's nice to turn the usual procession of fast boats followed by slow boats on its head. For a bit anyway!   As I sail on a puddle finishing the fleet isn't that hard, if I'm RO I usually make sure I'm out on the water somewhere near the front of the fleet just before the end of the race then get the RIB driver to backtrack down the course as we finish boats. We're around the fleet pretty quickly, and we'll note any potential post finish gun overtaking so we can chat to any affected parties when we're ashore. I've never really had an issues, but that's small (sub 30) fleets on small water. We started doing pursuits years back to break the "series fatigue" issue, and made a bit of an effort in awarding minor prizes at the end of sailing on the day. For a few years we were doubling our turnouts, this has dropped off a bit but I still think they are a really useful addition to the programme. And while I grew up at the club in the 70s when class racing was the gold standard life's moved on, and I for one an ok with PY racing. To paraphrase an old quote a bad day PY sailing is better than a good day with no sailing at all. 

Yes, he can be annoying and insulting. I don't think he is the worst person on here.

Edited by 423zero - 24 May 22 at 6:05am

Yes, agree a great discussion and some excellent points mentioned.
To pick up a few earlier comments...sounds like most think people would be happy to pay for coaching (whether in the RYA system or not).
And yes, cheap boat storage is a major benefit of the 'club' system although here in central London we don't have much capacity, so to ensure we don't turn into a 'Storage Club' rather than a 'Sailing Club' we triple boat storage fees (yes, triple) if the boat doesn't go out more than X number of times a year. Progressively we are moving towards a club boat system as well but this is raising the issue of how we arrange maintenance..... (paid or unpaid?!)
But dinghy sailing at our club is on the up, with RYA courses full, lots of people fun sailing and many learning new skills.
Re PY...... it is a good system (run by good people!) although tide does definitely stretch it and mean you need to locally adjust, unless all boats are already in a tight band (not the case for us - the X1 being miles away from Lasers and Enterprises) although it gets complicated as in addition to 'normal up and down with tide/against tide racing we do downriver races on the ebb timed to turn at LW so the tide then makes fast boats slower not faster....🤨
And for new designs, being an empirical system it takes a little time for enough data points to generate a 'steady state' number although the key, as I know only too well, will be just to generate enough results, period.