The Race Committee for the Etchells Mid-Winters Regatta decided to twist things up on the race course for the final weekend of the Jaguar Series. They made an amendment to the sailing instructions to allow for windward gates at the top mark, initially, gates without offset marks. At the skippers meeting, the night before racing began, the sailors had a lot of anxieties about this change. Dave Perry, author of The Racing Rules of Sailing, got up to speak about possible situations that we would see the rules come into play with the choice of the two windward marks to sail around. With nearly 90 boats, the race committee’s hope was to relieve congestion at the single windward mark and allow for more movement of positions within the fleet. Paul Elvstrom, Olympic sailing great, had introduced the concept of windward gates in the late 1960’s. The race committee posted his article and assured us that they hadn’t reinvented the wheel.

One of the many fears that the racers had was that downwind boats wouldn’t be able to see the upwind boats that had right of way on starboard or leeward, let alone get out of the way in time. In one race, this played out as two boats smashed rigs, head to head, and one boat ended up with the short end of the stick, a broken mast. The RC adjusted and added in offset marks to the gates which helped to eliminate some of the pile-ups and sticky situations.

I commend the race committee for sticking their necks out there and trying something new. It made a lot more work for them trying to keep the courses square and longer hours in the jury room to iron out the protests. Hopefully we will see the windward gates again soon, not only in Etchells fleets but others as well. Stay tuned to hear our first hand experiences with strategy and tactical thinking with this new course.