We have a really good problem at the www.CotswoldModelYachtclub.co.uk because we've seen very significant growth in the last year and we now face the problem of having a fleet where we have 15 boats on the startline.  If we get much bigger we will be knocking on  18-20 in a few months.  My question is how should we best manage the fleet. It's a bi weekly fleet of 'small boats' comprising 10+ DF65 with a few affinity and one 3d printed RG65.  I've looked at HMS but it seems too  complicated  and doesn't seem to work for a series where people drop in and drop out.  We've heard of people splitting the fleet into A and B fleets and promoting boats from one fleet to another at the end of the year or even monthly.

So open to ideas please. 

Hi Paul

Might I suggest that if you end up with 'too many'  on any 'club' day (and I leave it to your club to decide who too many is - but remember that as HMS allows for a start line containing (I think) 20 boats that you might not get away with many less for an Open Event !) that you do what we do and that is to ensure for each 'oversubscribed' club event that those (numerically, not personally!) who are deemed to be one of 'the too many' - be that one or more skippers - act for a particular race during the session as Race Officer and or Observer(s).

This has the effect of ensuring that all competitors of the day understand and have a crack at the implications and pitfalls of actually doing those jobs at club race level, ensures that all competitors are aware that they are under the scrutiny of observers and remedy any breaches of which they might be 'guilty' other than just hoping that no-one notices, and learn that if an open event occurs at their club and they are asked to help it's not quite so terrifying as they imagine and ultimately the poor old event organiser does not go mad trying to find a team to support him or her.

Yes - you might have to run an extra race or two to get the number of discards that you wish, and someone will have to work out on the day a simple rota so that each competitor during the morning or day has a turn off doing the officiating but it's manageable and everyone will still get their full crack at the number of races they wish.

Hope that this is all understandable, and you may be indeed doing it already in some form or another, but it works for us!

Cheers

Chris Durant   

Thanks Chris your suggestion is very helpful