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Cruiser Racing, that great oxymoron. Surely you either go cruising or you go racing. Not so. Have you ever been sailing down the river or estuary, when you see another boat in front and start tweaking the sails to see if you can catch up? If so then you could well have the racing bug. It just needs developing.
How do I start racing?
If you want to dip your toe into racing try one of the Wednesday Evening Series which are relaxed informal races around a few buoys. You can participate with white sails without using a spinnaker or fancy brown or black sails if you like. This would be a great introduction.
In one design classes the first boat over the finishing line is the winner as all the boats are similar. However Cruisers are of many different designs. Some boats are built to be seaworthy if caught out by severe weather crossing the Atlantic. Other boats have bilge keels to allow them to dry out and stay upright. Other boats are built as racing boats which optimise speed against a rating system and have varying sizes of sails etc. This means a handicap system is required that can be multiplied by or divided into the elapse time to decide who wins.
The Medway Yacht Club uses a free handicap system called the Yacht Time Correction, YTC, handicap system in all its races. To obtain a free YTC handicap you need to submit the overall and waterline length, the beam, draft and weight of your boat plus sail areas and a few other bits of information as described below and in a few days, you will receive a free YTC handicap rating for both spinnaker racing and white sail racing. A boat must declare on race entry if it wants to use the white sail handicap for the whole series or not.
What is the next step?
You might find the downwind legs a bit slow under just white sails, so you want the extra excitement of using a cruising chute or even a spinnaker to speed things up. This in turn leads to needing extra crew to handle the extra sails and you might even want to practice a bit.
Where does it end?
When the bug really bites and you get yourself a racing boat with fancy sails and a large crew to match. You fill in the forms and send a chunk of cash to the RORC and you have an IRC rating. You are now a bone fide racer.
Do I need a large crew?
It very much depends on how seriously you want to race. For white sails racing many people compete effectively with only 2 people on board. As you get more serious you need more and more people. The club has a Crew Finder Service on this web site that can help put you in contact with potential crew.
Typical MYC Organised Racing Season
Our racing season is from April to November and includes:
- Spring Series – 4 or 5 race series with committee boat or Club line starts
- Medway Keel boat Regatta. 3 days of intense racing in conjunction with the one designs with committee boat starts and finishes for Racers and Cruisers as well as the Medway Challenge Race on Friday for the less serious racer who just wants to do one race. It includes the famous social events ashore.
- Wednesday Evening Series.
During the long summer evenings we hold an informal “Allcomers” race series staring at 19:00 every Wednesday. A great excuse for a light hearted race to wind down after work followed by a meal and a drink in the clubhouse. - For the less serious we have the annual Montgomery Race usually held in mid summer involving a simple course from the club to the infamous wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery and back to the club. Hitting the mark is not recommended. Results are worked out using the Cruiser Class Captain’s secret formula.
- Name of the River Challenge. This is less of a race, more of a pilotage exercise. You leave the Club Line to start whenever you like and have to pass named buoys on the river in any order, returning to the club to finish. Time your start to make the best use of the tide for your boat but you have to make sure there is enough water round all the buoys for your boat.
- Autumn Series – We end the year with this ever popular series – the biggest and best series on the East Coast in our opinion!