Onboard the Committee Boat
Today, at Wembley we had a Merlin Rocket Team Racing event. Usually, I work on Saturdays, but I managed to swap it. Steve was supposed to be driving an umpire boat and I had decided to go to the club and see if they needed any help. If not, I could cruise in my Laser or race with BTYC, which is one of the other clubs. My alarm went off at 8:30 and I could hear heavy rain outside. I didn’t really like the idea of get soaked as soon as I would get out of the house and since I went to bed at 5:00 last night, I thought I might sleep a bit longer. I was woken up at 10:00 by a work related call. I got up and I saw a message that Steve had sent me at 9:30 saying he was on his way to the Welsh Harp. I decided I would have a nice coffee and breakfast and then I would go.
That moment my mobile rang. It was Steve and he was asking, if I could be at the club within 35 minutes. I waived goodbye at the coffee and breakfast, threw my gear into a bag and drove to the club. It turns out that me and Steve will be on the committee boat at the start line. We would be doing a 3-2-1-0 start sequence and in order to avoid any confusion over flags, we would be holding praddles. A praddle is a very short paddle that is missing the stick you hold from. Instead it has a handle at a 90 degree angle to the paddle, that you hold it from. We were left to sort everything out, more or less. We had two start watches, the three praddles, numbers printed on A4 pages to show which race is on, key to the old committee boat, a bottle of water, waterproof jackets and sandwiches for breakfast.
We went out and we planned everything because we didn’t want to be the ones that would mess things up. The hoot was not very loud and after the second race we were given a whistle by Geraldine, who was crewing for David. This made things easier. The only problem we had, was that the wind would drift our boat and every 2 or 3 races we would have to move forward. Steve was in charge of timing and whistling. I was in charge of holding the praddles and backup timing. The backup watch (mine) saved the day a few times, so the morning session (15 races) went quite smoothly.
If you haven’t watched team racing, you have to do it. It is very aggressive, very fierce and there are as many incident in a 7 minute race as in a 2 hour race. Team racing is between two teams with 2 or 3 boats each. In this case it was two boats in each team. The team’s aim is not to have a boat that finishes last (4th). The whole thing is so much different. Effectively you don’t aim to cross the start line first. All the time you have to make sure that you teammate is not last. If your team mate is first and you are not last you have to keep to keep at least one opponent behind you. All the time people ask for water, call starboard, call windward and everything else they can. You really need to know your rules and you have to be able to react very quickly. I am not ready for any team racing to be honest.
The morning session was over without any major incidents and we went in to have lunch. They decided they would have another series of races after lunch. We went out again and this time we let out all the anchor chain and it proved to be the best practice. We didn’t have to move again until the end of racing. As soon as we were about to start, one of the teams told us that one of their boats was damaged and they would be swapping boat with another team. This meant that they would have to go in get the other crew in the boat and then come back out. We told them to bring the other crew in our boat, so we would save time. The problem would be what would happen when the two teams that were sharing the same boat would have to face each other. David offered his boat to one of the teams. Then later on a crew in another boat was injured and
one of the spare crews would have to cover for him. To cut the long story short we ended up having permanently 3 more people aboard the committee boat and after each match, a boat would come next to our boat to swap crews or whatever. It was getting really complicated.
We had people standing in our way, talking to us and all that. The result was that Steve started a couple of sequences without checking if I am ready and as a result I hadn’t started my watch. On the last sequence, although we started with both watches, somehow we got distracted and we missed the 2 minute hoot. We consulted the senior umpire and he said we should restart the sequence. We restarted the sequence and then everything went according to plan. That was the only mistake we did. Obviously throughout the day we had people arguing our calls but nothing major. Generally speaking everybody was happy and we didn’t have anyone making any official complaints.
Steve had to go straight away, but I stayed on and I even ended up behind the bar, serving drinks. I have done it in the past, so everything went OK with that. So, today I did 30 start sequences in a day which would take me about 5 to 10 years to do through the normal race officer duties. Watching the team racing was very interesting and a good experience. I have been doing things for the club, so this makes me feel more involved. I try to stay out of politics as much as I can and I just do what I am asked. In the same time I try to enjoy it by doing these things with people I can have fun with, chat, joke etc. Tomorrow is the Merlin Rocket Open Meeting and maybe I will end up in a safety boat or something. It’s supposed to be windy tomorrow.