Another racing season has almost passed by so I apologise for this brief news letter as time is running out very quickly.
First all my thanks to all the competitors this year your support, which has been very encouraging. A full race program for 2007 will soon be on the club website so please have a good look so that you can plan your season.
There have been some very emotive handicap issues this year particularly in P.Y. and I would like to thank David Cairncross for the effort he has gone to trying to make it work. We know that P.Y. is never going to be a perfect system but I think we have made some progress during the "Frost Bite Series".
This leads me onto the current situation in the IRC class. As a number of boats have moved from P.Y. into IRC during the autumn there is quite a big disparity in performance within the fleet by virtue of boat design. Therefore it would make sense to have split IRC fleet which was the case a few years ago. However we are also conscious of the fact that the performance end of the fleet is not very well supported at the moment, furthermore decent fleet numbers in the sports boat fleet only exists at certain times of the year as well. Consequently for 2007 we are proposing the following and I will let David Cairncross our principal race officer explain this in his own words, which are as follows.
'A number of slower boats have returned to IRC from PY, and a number of new boats have joined the IRC fleet but they are all older, lower-handicapped, non-planing boats. At the same time the upper end of the IRC fleet has been depleted. This gives unfair racing, especially for the slower boats. However there are not enough boats to split IRC into two fleets and in certain cases splitting on handicap number does not give a fair split.
After consultation with the fleet it has been agreed that from Jan 2007 there will be no separate sportsboat fleet and all non-PY entrants will race with IRC certificates. This new fleet will be split into two based on the IRC TCF, Hull Factor (HF) and Displacement Length Ratio (DLR). These figures are shown on your IRC Certificate.
To find out which fleet you will be sailing you need to answer three questions;
Is your DLR > 200?
Is your HF < 8.25?
Is your TCF < 1.010?
If the answer to any two of these questions is yes then you will be sailing in the traditional fleet otherwise you will be sailing in the modern fleet.
The use of DLR & HF here is only used for fleet allocation purposes and does not affect your TCF for race results.'
Cheers,
David Cairncross.
We are going to try this proposal for 2007 and it will probably be the only practical way to race during the winter months as I suspect most of the fleet numbers will be a little depleted until the Spring. If the situation changes with a sudden influx of performance IRC yachts and sports boats then we can always reconsider the situation.
In January next year we intend to hold an A.G.M. for the cruiser racer section and all the details will be posted on the club website during December. In the meantime John Colleypriest ( Famous Grouse ) has agreed to be the P.Y. representative as Jonathan Crofts Davies ( Corsair ) has moved into IRC.
Our "CHRISTMAS PARTY" and "FROST BITE PRESENTATION" is on Friday the 15th of December the tickets are on sale behind the bar for £10:00 each and they are going very quickly !!!! so make sure you buy your tickets now to avoid disappointment. ( My thanks to Colin Lyons for organising this event )
It just remains for me wish you a "Merry Christmas" and a "Happy New Year".
Steve Cooper
Cruiser Racer Chairman