Top tips for the Spring Series

The Daily Sail speaks to chief organiser Philip Gage

The Raymarine-sponsored Spring Series starts this weekend for yachts racing on the Solent. The Daily Sail spoke to Philip Gage (below), who is the chairman of the organising committee about this first major fixture run by the Warsash Sailing Club.



With 160 entries so far it is anticipated that this will grow to about 200 by the end of the series as the weather improves and warms up towards the final weekend on the 27 April. In all there are six Sunday race days to which are added two Saturdays, 12 April and 26 April, which will make up a separate Spring Championship for the Mumm 30s, 1720s, 707s and Sportsboats. As usual there is no racing in the Series over the Easter Weekend of 18-21 April.

Following the introduction of the sportsboats eight years ago the fleets are split into White and Blue fleets. With the White group doing predominantly windward leeward racing and the Blue group, which includes IRM, IRC, Sigma 33 and 38, Bowsprit and the X332s, racing round the buoys.

With a broad variety of different type of boats out racing Philip emphasises the need to cater for the different requirements: "It does mean we have to design courses that are safe enough for the mixture of boats, 1720s and 707s don’t co-habit the leeward mark very well so we try to keep them apart."

The event has grown to so large that they now use five committee boats to operate the two fleets. "We are having to charter in some boats," explains Philip, "RIBs are a swap arrangement with other clubs but we are chartering two committee boats. There is an increasing reluctance of members making their boats available, as competitor boats are getting bigger and faster, there is a clutch of very big and fast yachts and the sight of them storming down on the start line does tend to frighten potential committee boat owners!”

This underlines just how many people are needed to run the racing, all of whom are volunteers, “I write about 80 thank you letters at the end of the series, and that is a really a very important part of my job. Getting and keeping the volunteers is very important and making sure they all feel loved! We are very lucky, we have a very enthusiastic team."

The numbers of competitors and organisers involved has lead to a full ‘risk- assessment’ to be introduced. This was first done a couple of years ago and provides a full and detailed strategy of dealing with the What if? scenarios.

Philip describes that in the first year this was done is was put to good use: "A chartered sportsboat of some sort were doing a spinnaker drop and the kite gatherer got pulled overboard, still hanging onto the spinnaker. So everyone in the boat stood up to look after him and the boat gybed, while they were all standing up. So to start with we had one hypothermic person and one concussed person.

"What we didn’t know at the time was that the other people on the boat were also concussed, so when they got to the jetty at Warsash and there were four ambulances waiting for them all. No one was seriously hurt and they were all discharged later that day."

As with all situations like this important lessons are learnt and as a result a further nine people from Warsash Sailing Club were put on first aid courses to improve on the management of the situation on the water. Not a usual committee boat requirement, this shows that the organisers really are trying to cross t’s and dot i’s.

When it comes to the racing Philip has several areas they are trying to improve on this year. The biggest priority is the starting lines for both fleets.

"For the Blue group we are trying to speed up the laying of the line, especially moving the outboard end of the line. We want really to have a static committee boat at each end of the line. What we are going to be doing is to have two pin end committee boats and if we want to change the line we will use the other committee boat to do that. Put the new line in and then the old one can up anchor.

"If someone is over the line, we can’t move it for four minutes as we have to give them this amount of time to come back and re cross."

The committee boat at the pin has to be anchored because of the potential for disputes over the right of way, Philip explains: “If the boat at the end of the line is not anchored and just observing then we have an ambiguous right of way situation with the yachts who are racing, we certainly do not want a situation where boats are calling for water on an obstruction (the pin end observer) on the start line.”

With two committee boats looking after the pin end a bit of coordination is needed to make it all happen and they will be using mobile phones to do this.

For the White group they will be implementing the two pin end buoys, one red and one green, in a similar way to the Winter Series.

"There is a very strong possibility that unless the wind or tide are very stable that we will be moving the line from one start to the other. Even down to the line having to be longer for the 707s.”



Here lies the first lesson for competitors, which will aid the committee boats on both starts, and ultimately make the day run much easier.

“Our biggest problem is people sailing down the line who actually have a later start," says Philip. "I fully see they have a perceived need to sail down the line to get the bias, but if they are doing it during the start sequence for another class they are actually interfering with the start. To sail up and down in someone else’s start is invariably counter productive. We may be moving the pin at any time up to the preparatory signal four minutes to the start anyway."

For these starting routines it is important that all competitors have VHF radios as detailed in the sailing instructions. This is especially applies to the White group, who in Philip's experience, have very few people listening to the VHF announcements. “The person who does actually listen to the radio will actually enjoy themselves more as they will know what is going on."

Unbelievably an official representative from one of the classes said to Philip that they didn’t need a VHF as a piece of safety equipment because everyone has mobile phones. Says Philip; “A helicopter, lifting someone off who is injured does not use a mobile phone to communicate! I don’t think there is any excuse for a competitor not to have one, it’s such an essential part of the safety equipment."

To this end they will be upping the on the water scrutineering and as a result and you could get thrown out if you don’t have the equipment (specifically lifejackets, flares and VHF) that is stated on the sailing instructions.

The final point to note from the organisers perspective is what Philip terms "the breadth of inappropriate experience". Once you have signed the entry form you are then bound by the racing rules, Philip notes: "We have a lot of Yachtmasters, who may be perfectly safe taking a boat across the channel, but who don’t know the racing rules. We have plenty of cases where the qualified Yachtmaster has been thrown out of the protest against an un-qualified but highly experienced racing skipper."

He anticipates three major boat on boat collisions (based on his 12 years of involved with the series), which will result in a fairy heavy protest and if there is a lot of damage involved it will usually go to appeal. For the organisers this means a lot of extra work in dealing with all the required paperwork and communication between parties.



The main causes are boats not being in control and broaching in strong winds, people not keeping an adequate look out, mistakes in sail handing and misjudgements in close quarters, for example the main not going out for a duck.

So to recap! DO:

- Read the sailing instructions
- Stay away from the line if it’s not your start
- Have all the required safety gear on board
- Have an operational VHF radio and listen to it
- Know the racing rules, but also bear in mind the other boat may not!
- Maintain your concentration to avoid boat handling errors

The new sponsorship form Raymarine has gone down with Warsash Sailing Club very well. Philip says “We were delighted when Raymarine approached us, financially it’s very important to the event and it’s also good to be associated with company”. For competitors this means a subsidised entry fee and some useful practical items such as a new racing chart. More important is that Raymarine are putting some hard cash behind the bar at the club...

All you need to do is call up on Ch37 for the complimentary ferry, which will come and pick you up from the anywhere downstream of Mercury Marina and drop you off at the Club and take you back again after. If you need one last incentive to go to the club after racing, how about the news that an additional deep fat fryer that has been bought this year. “You can now buy one big ‘crew portion’ of chips” concludes Philip.