Junior events race officers

Presume your statement “went the wrong way” meant that they left the mark to starboard. I used to advise juniors to find where the windward mark was by checking the wind themselves, until one day when they all went to the wrong mark due to the race officer not responding to a big shift before the start

Sadly, the lesson now is don’t assume that the RO has laid a perfect course & know the rules well enough to know what to do . It has been a hard lesson for the youngsters but they will not make the same mistake twice.

Whilst I totally agree with you that a lot of short races are better than a few marathons (but I am biased, being a 9er person ), there are many others who disagree.

Without wishing to denigrate the efforts of volunteers in our sport, this is the price that we pay in assuming that the race management will be as good as the sailing water and/or its members - sadly this is not always the case & even National Championships can be a disaster.

Just a quick comment using a very much simplified triangular course, imagine a simple Port rounded triangluar course.  If the wing mark is accidentally listed to be rounded to Sbord as seemed to happen here the correct course is not to do a loop round the wing mark, it is just to sail the sausage between the windward and leward marks, by doing this the wing mark will have been passed to Sbord, as required in the course, there is no definition of how closely a mark needs to be passed, it must just be left to the correct side.

Hope this makes sense computer skills couldn't manage a diagram

Oh I can understand that annoyance of the parents in a situation like this, I have been both sides of this srgument (Kind of) I have been a competator in many a jounior open event that has gone slightly wrong. I definatly think that someone should have noticed that error. As the class is toppers im not sure about the ages of the kids wether they would have been able to visualise the course before they sailed it, so dont know if they should have noticed. As momin said a trianglular course would be the answer to this, what could be done is to set out a triangular and trapezoidal course in the SIs (course A and B) and then have a board of A or B and the direction (port or starboard) and you cant have only one mark the wrong way round. This would mean that the competitors should know where the marks would be (roughly), before starting. An added bonus is that the race comitty dont need to worry too much about their course.

I definatly think that the race comity should have admitted its error, but im not sure if it would have been fair to give the competitors that didnt do the course correctly a finnish, or chuck the race out. They may have been able to decide that since it was thier error that they would give everyone their finnish positions regardless of which way round THAT mark they went. (not sure about what the rules would say to this, but if someone protested the comittie??)

On the topic of 3 long races, I dont realy know how to argue against that as this is what i am used to the whole time. Depending on what discard system they had it would be good to have an extra race so that one discard would be allowed (would have helped in this situation). But looking at it, a larger number of shorter races would be good as it is only a junior open it would give them more experience in starting etc. also i dont think that the racing back to beck would be a problem, having 3races a day they would have to have 2back to back at least, and having more shorter races would still take up the same length of time.

But from the point of view of a race officer it can be hard to set a course for the ability of the racers if you have never seen them race before, and in events like this you normaly have a huge range of ability. I think that sometimes they have to take ctep back and stop thinking about setting a perfect course and runnign the race and think if the kids understand etc. The RO should work closely with the rescue cover before that start, breif them on the course and get them to stand off the line a bit and say to the kids before they go on the water if they are undure of anything ask the rescue crew (as it is harder to gety close to the comitty boat).

Rule 28.1 refers to the piece of string rule "when drawn taut, pass each mark on the required side and touch each rounding mark"

When visualising the taut string, it strikes me that it touches a mark when there is an angle of less than 180 degrees between approaching and leaving the mark.

On this basis, a rounding mark is one where you must change direction (however slight) whereas a passing mark is literally that - the string does not actually touch the mark and you just sail past it on a certain side.

You may ask what is the point of a passing mark if you don't have to turn but I have used this sometimes in club racing when short of space & I need to stop boats from going too far over to another area.

Hope this helps & no doubt someone will correct me if my interpretation is wrong

You may ask what is the point of a passing mark if you don't have to turn but I have used this sometimes in club racing when short of space & I need to stop boats from going too far over to another area.

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My question was not what is the point of a passing mark rather what is the point of a rounding mark, any course can be laid just using the term passing and in order to pass certain marks to the correct side you will be forced to "round" them, you would only need the term "round" in the SIs if you wanted to deliberately lay a bad course that included a looped mark.  My only suggestion is to remove the term rounding from all SIs as I can see no need for the term.  I fully agree that passing marks are a vital tool in the OOD kit to control the boats on the water whether to restrict the sailing area or the use of mid leg gates in order to keep track of positions on each lap.