Cruiser Racing March Newsletter

Spring Series

The start of the Cruiser Racing Season is coming up on us faster than a Far East 28 on a flat-out plane. The first race in the Spring Series is due to start on 10^th April at 10:00. Don’t forget to get your entry in ASAP so you can be included in the Sailwave system in time to get the results out.

There are some significant changes to the Sailing Instructions for this year so we are having a briefing session this coming Sunday (3^rd April at 11:00) to go over these. The complete documents are available to download from the Yacht Racing page of the web site. They make exciting reading!

https://www.medwayyachtclub.com/boating/racing/keelboat-racing/yacht-racing

Don’t forget that you are going to need the 2022 course sheet.

I will be handing out entry forms at the pre season briefing as well as asking for volunteers to start races for the Spring Series.

Dates and start times of the Spring Series are:

Starts may be combined or split by rating if the number of starters warrants it.

Remember Class 1 is for the serious racers with IRC certificates for their boats. Class 2 is for the less serious racer who still wants to race with a spinnaker but without the complication of IRC so uses the RYA’s NHC system. Class 3 is for cruisers who really want a sail with a purpose and who certainly do not want to play with anything as un-gentlemanly as a spinnaker, so White Sails only.

Regatta

The Regatta this year is going to be a 2 day event on the Thursday and Friday of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Celebration Bank Holiday. It was felt that with the Medway River Pageant planned for the Saturday it would be impractical to run a race. Full details are available on the web site.

Keelboat Regatta – Medway Yacht Club

Name of the River Challenge

This is a new event for the Racing Section in that it is not a race by any stretch of the imagination. It is more of a pilotage test. Scheduled to be run on 19^th June, fundamentally you have to round al the navigation marks on the river which have names rather than just numbers. This will be all buoys from Folly (AKA No 25) to Grain Hard, including Otterham Fairway. You can start whenever you like but you have to declare when you start, finish and round each buoy on the declaration form. You can round the buoys in any order and mostly in any direction. You can use your engine but you must declare the number of minutes you ran it for and that time will be added on to your elapsed time. The trick will be to end up at Grain Hard at low water but you will need to have enough water in the creek to get round Otterham Fairway. Full details are in the Sailing Instructions

Summer Series

Since most of the serious racers are going away to play on the South Coast the Summer Series will not have an IRC class so will just be raced for by classes 2 and 3 under NHC only. Any racers staying at home are most welcome to join in with class 2. Also many of the cruisers are going to be away cruising so we are limiting the Summer Series to one race per month. The dates have been picked so the tides are good to go out into the Estuary so be prepared to be out all day.

I hope to see you all on Sunday for the pre-season briefing and on the water a week later.