An Alternate Season Schedule

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Here is an idea to consider for a later start to the Etchells regular season, when the weather is better, and more boats are better prepared to launch…

Have a pre-season and a regular season, similar to what we are doing in 2020. The pre-season is for those that can’t wait to get on the water and don’t mind some frost-biting in the cold or rain. The pre-season would start at the usual time, around May 12, and consist of 3 or 4 or 5 weeks of Tuesday evenings. The pre-season would be scored using Appendix A9 and the boats that race in that season would be ranked for this series, with the worst 20% of a boat’s scores thrown out, as is the usual case.

The regular season would start in mid-June, and have about 13 or 14 weeks left before darkness intrudes on the race time. Maybe split this into two 6 or 7-week series.

One consideration is to give some credit in the regular series to the boats that raced in the pre-season. One approach is to take the pre-season series rankings, and carry those rankings forward as the “1st race” of the regular season. The boats that did not sail in any of the preseason would score either a DNC for this “1st” race of the regular season, or alternatively, they are scored a “DNF” for the pre-season series. It depends on how much of a scoring advantage/penalty we want to impose for this 1st race – 1 more than the total registered boats, or 1 more than the number of pre-season boats. In either case, the “1st” race can be discarded using the regular throw-out scheme. This carry-over of points from the pre-season series is sort of like what is done with some of the past America’s Cup challenger selection rounds.

Kollegewidgwok YC in Blue Hill has a June series, but does not score the June races with their regular season championship series, which is held during July and August. Their reason is that they have many seasonal members who don’t arrive before July 4th, or so, but I think there are a number of folks in Fleet 27 that do not enjoy boat prep and sailing when the weather is cold and dreary in April and May. And, several Fleet 27 members need more time each spring to get their boats ready, anyway.

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