I guess I knew that was coming...

This year I tried something a bit different.
In previous years I had the Waves on the Official Wave Class Course and the rest on normal courses.

This year however, I had it so all the boats finished upwind and off the starboard side of the RC boat.
But, for the reaching mark, I knew the Yellow Course would like a tight reach, while the Spin Boats would not.
So, if you look at the drawing attached, I set the Yellow Course with a tight reach, and the Orange Course with a broader reach.
That gave the Waves, H16s, et al, a closer and fast reach.
At the same time, the Orange Course reach was deeper and where perhaps only the brave would hoist the spinnaker.

Also, note that the Orange Course was still high enough over the Yellow Course to not interfere. And it extended far enough past the Yellow Course that there would be little or not interferance with the Yellow guys.

Overall, I was pleased with how it worked.

Carl and Mary referred to some other experimental courses.

Here is the full story.
After the 1988 Olympics (I belive that was the year -- at my age they all start running together) the Olympic Committee declared that we had to have new courses that were more easily viewed and understood by a hopefully bigger audience.
Their reasoning was that sailing cost more and had less viewership.., therefore might be eliminated as it was not making enough money.

Our directive was to play with different courses.
So, at the Miami Olympics Regatta we did just that. There were several handed to us to try and we were free to try some on our own.

That funny one that the Lasers, Soling and a few other classes still use was one we did not like.
I cmae up with the idea of using gates at the top, middle and bottom of the course. This seemed very appropriate for the Tornado since they were famous for simply banging corners.

We first eliminated the weather gate as that could really lead to chaos.
I still like the idea of the middle gate as that allowed spectator boats to pretty much see the whole course from the mid-area without interferring.

But, about a year later, the Tornado class scrapped that gate as well.

That left the leeward gate, which is still very popular.
All this was pretty much derived during that time.

Guess we really did not accomplish much in the long run, did we over the time tested course of yore <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />?

Rick