Here's the final SB story:

http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2...ne-abascal-win-hobie-16-north-americans/

Any announcement for next year's NAs? Hobie 16s in 2016!

Mike

Just because scores don't show on the results doesn't mean races weren't run. Regatta Network has some particular quirks when it comes to doing the custom scoring required by the round robin / gold / silver. It took some time to figure out how to evict the gremlins from the Silver Fleet scoring - and time for me to drive back home when I could sit down at a computer and figure it out.

With the exception of the first day, the winds were predominantly light (under 10 kts) - with a stiff current, which made things interesting.

The wind would be from the NE in the morning, then slowly die until the sea breeze kicked in about 2 PM from the SE.

Two races were abandoned mid-race due to the dying wind. The first was blown off when many boats couldn't make the weather mark in the light air / current - although some had just made it to the second (short) weather mark. Not a popular decision for those people (Wally), but it was the right thing to do.

The other race was blown off before the second start of the sequence when the wind started to go weird and we recognized the pattern. No harm, no foul.

Race 10 was abandoned after the fact when we tried to shorten the race at the second weather mark due to time limit concerns. The anchored weather mark / finish boat dragged anchor in the current until they were below the layline to the mark. Mass confusion resulted. In comparing the finish sheets from the WM boat and the Pin boat (who was sighting from the other end of the line), you wondered if they were scoring the same race. The only fair thing to do for all competitors was to throw the race out - which also took care of a half-dozen requests for redress seeking the same remedy. Of course, the guy who "won" that race was very unhappy and filed a redress request, seeking to have the race reinstated. Redress was not granted.

All in all, a very challenging regatta for both the competitors and race committee. Pensacola YC was a very accommodating host and we hope we can return sometime in the near future. "Maxine" was a great signal boat, but the fancy flag system had some of the same problems all flag systems rigged on halyards and athwartships have - flags on halyards go up slowly (unless they are on bungees) and the side-by-side flags obscure each other. We only used the flag system for the group color flags. All the starting flags were flown on poles from the foredeck (their flag system could not accommodate my 3'x3' heavy nylon canvas flags, either).

2016 Hobie North Americans will be in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, October 10-14, 2016

I nominate that for understatement of the year.

I worked the Laser North American's this year, and although I was on the Jury (not RC), I had some exposure to the nightmare that was getting Regatta Network to properly score the event.

Thanks for the follow-up, Matt. It was pretty obvious from the weather stations that it was a difficult week.

All of the scoring systems have quirks, and no two work the same way. RN is probably my least favorite, for a variety of reasons.

As you could undoubtedly tell from my postings, I long for the days when we enjoyed "live" rounding reports online. Without getting into hows/whys (we both know what it takes to make this happen), has there been any discussion in the class to provide that again? The HCA set a gold standard for this in the past, and I frequently refer to that in discussions with other OAs (for any type of boat).

Mike

It was total operator error. In establishing "divisions" (red, green, blue, yellow, gold, silver), you need to put multiple divisions in brackets thus: [Green][Silver]. We had one entry with [Green[Silver] - and boy, did it do some weird stuff. Classic programming syntax error.

The other problem was that the "Preview Results" in the scoring module will display all races where someone is scored, whether scoring is complete for that particular race or not (anyone not scored gets 0 points). When you call up the results from "outside" the program, any race that is not completely scored is not displayed. Lessons learned.

With RN or Yacht Scoring or other online systems, I tend to review them in a second browser, not logged in, looking at what the "audience" sees. It's amazing what you catch when you do that. Especially important for systems which update to the audience as results are entered (not my favorite feature).

Round robins certainly up the ante with complexity. What was the driver for that format?

Mike

In order of priority:
- Competitor preference (57% for / 43% against)
- Number of boats -> size of starting line -> no chance of a 3 boat line (we barely had enough mark/chase boats as it was).
- Small playground - the area we had was restricted on all sides by channels, shallows and the exclusion zone for PNAS. A big starting line was really out of the question.

The upside was that we got a ring-side seat to a Blue Angels practice. Fast, low and loud over the fleet at least four times on Tuesday.

Gotcha. Multi-boat lines in current can be a bear too.

Too bad about the dragging anchor at the finish. Sometimes we get lucky and can minimize the damage, other times, there's just no saving Humpty Dumpty. Fortunately, those times are quite rare.

Thoughts on live roundings?

Mike

Too many resources required to satisfy a small audience.

You need a dedicated media person at each end of the course to do it right. We barely had enough people to staff the mark boats as it was. (That was one of my peeves with PYC - they would never give me a clear picture of who was going to show up to be on RC on any given day. "Don't worry about it. We've got it covered." Well, sometimes they didn't have it covered, and if I hadn't had a core of HCA people helping, we would have been screwed.)

So, you don't want to do this, or the class doesn't?

Lori did it in my RV with a VHF and internet access from a laptop, back in 2006. The mark boats called out the top three at each rounding, and at the finish. This was all uploaded as unofficial, and close to real-time.

With today's technology (phones), you don't even need the extra person (although it is nice). I posted from the water during this year's Alter Cup. The only time it was hard was when we were moving marks for the 5o5s while the F-18s were rounding.

I do agree that getting sufficient help, especially at "foreign" clubs, is probably one of the more challenging aspects of being a PRO. Especially when you ask for each boat to have a rescue swimmer (they really line up for that...).

Mike

I wasn't going to do it (I had enough $hit on my plate - my first priority is to the competitors, not the spectators) and the class didn't make it a priority.

You're the only one I've heard clamoring for it. That's the definition of "a small audience".

Understood. I agree it's an OA thing, not the PRO, which is why I asked what the class wanted.

We used to get over 100k hits, according to Matt. Maybe we've lost the audience due to losing momentum?

Mike