From Trygve Roberts - un-edited!

As a first time competitor in this event, I found it generally to be a very enjoyable experience, although there are one or two points worth mentioning to make things a bit better for 2011

Pro’s:

1.       Excellent sailing waters – really nice to sail on a clean ocean!

2.       Excellent facilities – Good, clean club house and well staffed bar. Enough hot water. Spotless ablutions.

3.       Friendly and welcoming club.

4.       Length of races very well worked out with minimal waiting between races.

5.       Efficient but tolerant bridge crew. They did a good job.

6.       Lovely scenery around the racing area.

7.       Highly competitive fleet.

What can be improved on:

1.       Format of racing becomes boring. Not 8 x windward/leeward races please. Having every race over exactly the same wind angles favours certain boats. The gybe mark was not a true gybe mark, but more of an offset downwind mark. The sports boats had to gybe twice to get to the gybe mark. Perhaps employ the Lipton format, where a different course is sailed for each race. Eg. Windward/ Leeward; Olympic; Square; 3 x triangles with true 90 degree reaches; and a medium distance race. A variety of courses does mean more work for the bridge and mark layers, but it would make this event very much more enjoyable, testing and interesting  for all competitors.

2.       Parking is a problem.

3.       FBYC website not updated.

4.       Results not always correct. Better to show actual finish times so competitors can identify mistakes earlier.

5.       Ensure the mark layers have sufficient fuel so marks can be reset/adjusted when necessary (as in Race 8)