Nigel Winkley

I would have loved to sail RA. However, the family holiday has gotten in the way. ☹️ As a bit of a reconciliation I have everything lined up for the M nationals in September.

I have a ferry I have accomodation Now I just need a spot (actually two) on the entry list. 😄

At the M & 10R Worlds we raced with the "classic" windward mark / dog leg, a windward gate inside out and finally the gate plus spreader marks. I didn't sail the IOM Worlds but have sailed multiple regattas incl. the last German M nationals with the outside in gate. The outside in gate is my least preferred option. If you are at the front of the fleet this creats a choke point where you are forced through the middle of the course with boats approaching / crossing from both sides on their way to the respective side of the gate. The videos of the last major IOM events provide a host of examples where front runners loose numerous places due to incidents caused by bunching up all of the fleet. The inside out gate in France worked well (allthough some managed to forget about the spreader and were DSQed multiple times) as it separates beating and running boats and was tactically challenging. However, depending on the lay of the land, the course and prevailing wind a windward mark with dog leg can work just fine.

Radio As in Fleetwood - now that sounds tempting. Just need a boat....😁

Thanks all. Got myself some sheet lead.

Thanks Wayne. Those were actually in the boat I got. They must have been of bad quality however, as they seem to have an iron content and were badly corroding.

I have been out of IOM game for some time. Currently rebuilding a boat that will need some 300g of corrector weights to bring it up to 4kgs. What is everyone using these days and how are you protecting against corrosion? The originals were badly bonded in place and rotting from exposure to salt water.

LiPo has higher voltage, therefore winch and servo have a higher output. LiPo is lighter for the same capacity. LiFe are not as sensetive to low temperatures I have been running LiPos in all classes of boats for as well as my radios more than 10 years without any issues.

and when is score significantly worse? One place lost, two, five or ten. All that is in the hands of the Jury! There is no objective measures for this. I lost enough places due to an incident on the last leg to not be promoted to A but relegated to C fleet - no redress given!

None of the initial paragraph is defined but only an interpretation. There is no clear cut, written definition of this. Thus it depends on how the members of the jury read the rule and act on it. But even on the details you describe above, the outcome of redress hearing in France was not consistant. The key question is, how long does an entanglement have to last. This is in the hands of the jury. With the pace of M & 10Rs a couple of seconds can make the difference between being promoted to the next fleet or not. A modern M and 10R stuck in irons by the action of another competitor is in essence disabled. Even with the best intent, any "seaman Like" action will loose you 10, 15 or more seconds. With the close racing we had in France, that was often the difference between being promoted and being relegated.

From experience at the last M / 10R Worlds there is another reason to not go down this path. That is the very bad definition in the RRS of being "Disabled ". The definition of Disabled is: "A boat is disabled while she is unable to continue in the heat." What does it mean to be "unable to continue", as a reuslt of what annd for how long? This gave room for a number of redress hearings for seamingly similar incidents with very different rulings in the jury room. Frustrating to say the least!

It's less about the power. The most basic servos have enough torque for the rudder on any IRSA class boat. However the cheap and chearful servos have one major short coming and that is accuracy. They don't centre as well as higher spec servos and also have play in the gears creating unwanted inaccuracy in stearing. As our boats are very sensitve to rudder input it's worth investing in good servo and precise linkage for accuracy and not for power. I have been using the Savöx SC-1251MG for years with not a single failure in M and 10R class boats.

no way is it forestay tension! It's solely the course you're sailing relative to the wind.

and being thereabouts is a fine line. 2 or 3° difference in your course down wind versus the boats around you, can make the difference between a perfect goose wing and a flapping jib.

Darin's / Martin's advise is (as most often) spot on! While the rule situation might seem crisp and clear, I doubt that most skippers while racing would come to the same result i.e. the boat on stbd is an obstruction and as a result I can't luff my fellow competitor into him. These are the incidents, that have a high probability of landing in a jury room when not talking to each other.