WORLD CLASS ???
LorRehe:
I feel bad. There is a lot of finger pointing going on. I knew as a scorer that we did not have about 8 boats come down and round the leeward mark the first time. The problem was we could not tell why. We eventually saw a grouping of boats up near the weather mark. But we still did not know what happened.
So lets learn from this to prevent it from happening again.
At the skipper's meeting, Jim Mc Donagh informed the racers that the North Americans was declared an "ACCIDENT FREE ZONE". That was wonderful. I discussed the fact that there would be a "BLACK FLAG" at both the windward mark and leeward mark.
Then we discussed the " O O T A" rule. When two boats are on a collision course the rule is "OUGHT OH, TURN AWAY". Ron Sherry and Dan Hearn taught this to the opti kids as the first rule. Imagine if even only one boat turns away, the collision is avoided. If both boats turn away, the collision is avoided.
Stuff happens out there and we were reminded that we all need to keep on our toes. And communication is key.
Fair winds,
Loretta Rehe
MOM DNUS 5144, Scorer
4695:
I didn't hear any finger pointing.
What I heard was a restatement of similar concerns about collisions prevention & injury/incident assessment and response systems. How we might have some gaps, and things that are being done to make the game a little bit safer.
4695
ERIC ANDERSON:
Iceboat racing is an awesome sport. Iceboating is also inherently a risky sport. When you have 50 boats converging on a windward mark in a very short time period you are going to have occasional collisions. If you sail and or race iceboats long enough, you are going to go swimming, you are going to hit pressure ridges and you are going to hit or get hit on the race course. I don’t like it, and would prefer it was not the norm, but I accept it. The reality is that you can’t stop a race every time a collision occurs on a race course. We would never be able to sail on windy days or on shorter courses.
It is easy to say with hindsight the race should have been black flagged. Having an RC member with a 4 wheeler and a black flag available at the windward mark is probably a good idea. Unfortunately, there is a finite limit to how many RC members are at an event and this is not always practical. In retrospect, the safest thing that was done was moving the windward mark down 75 yards to get the boats rounding away from the collision. On the other hand, I sailed past the collision twice while racing and did not observe anything different from other collisions. There were a lot of boat pieces and parts strewn about and everybody I could see was standing up and waving.
Now I am absolutely in favor of doing things that decrease the likely hood of collisions. I strongly agree with the use of Darling marks at the windward and leeward marks and I like the use of a secondary finish mark so the scorers can have some distance between themselves and the boats finishing down wind. I would be happy to see requirements to strengthen the sideboards in the cockpit area only to keep the cockpit area intact in a collision. I think the plank breakaway mechanism needs to be rethought and I think breakaway tillers should be mandatory. I also think we need to reexamine the Balsa S glass boats currently being built as I think they are too strong relative to the all wood boats and this may contribute to the severity of accidents in the future.
All food for thought
Eric Anderson US 5193
DN 805:
I would like to see a formula developed that would indicate the ratio of fleet size to the size of the sheet of ice upon which the course will be set. A sheet of ice 1.0 mile X 1.5 miles = X number of boats. .5 miles X 1.0 mile = Y number of boats in the fleet, etc. etc. This system would automatically allow for changes in course length when the wind shifts. (How many times have you gone to an event when the organizers said they could set a course 2 miles between the marks, only to learn that if the wind shifts 90 degrees that now there will be only be .6 miles between the marks?)
Another, less popular, consideration would be to make the boats slower with, perhaps, only 30" runners. A drawback would be that on rough ice the boats might actually have less control than if they used 36" runners.
A specification amendment might require that the head of the sail (thereby influencing the height of the tack and foot) be no lower than a measurement band placed on the mast at a specified height from the base of the mast. Raising the sail will make the boats slower and improve visibility as the sailor will be able to sail more upright in the boat, if he chooses.
An additional amendment that would improve visibility could establish a minimum dimension from the deck at the steering post to the uppermost part of the mainsheet block (usually a ratchet block) that is mounted on the steering post. Such measurement to be taken with a minimum 10 lbs pull on the mainsheet so the block would take the normal position it has when sailing. I understand that some skippers might choose to have the boom block overlap the ratchet block, but they would tend to reduce control of luff tension and mast rotation.
DN 805
US4961:
With regards to boat construction, I agree that the traditional wood boats MAY be too fragile relative to the speeds we are reaching now. Reinforcement of the cockpit area may be a good idea – like the cockpit of an F1 racecar. However, to say that the Glass/Balsa boats are too strong is unfounded and it is my opinion that we should be always looking forward with regards to robustness of design. I don’t know of any Glass/balsa Sitka collision that would indicate there is some inherent problem. All we know is that Sitka boats don’t fair well in collisions. If we want to require/encourage building of stronger hulls, I would suggest we increase the minimum hull weight to allow reinforcement without making an overweight boat. However, my hull weights 51 lbs and I don’t think it is an issue. We must keep in mind that when collisions happen, we are not expecting that the boat is somehow going to protect us like seatbelts & airbags. The skipper weighs more than the boat and is unrestrained. When the boat stops, the skipper keeps going and exits the boat. Weather the boat is destroyed or not, in my opinion, has little effect on injury except for being cut by jagged wood shards.
Respectfully,
John Davenport US-4961
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