How should I organise the registers of Boats, Classes, Series and Races for my club?
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The registers define the fundamental organisation of your club's racing. It
is vital that you get their structure right.
Start with the boat register. Every boat that takes part in any races needs
to be in the Boat Register. If it is not there its sail number will not be
in the list of boats available to the race officer when he is entering results.
Next consider the Class Register. All racing takes place in classes.
Each series of races, or each individual race, is for one of the classes in the
Class Register. For a boat to take part in a particular race it must be in
the Boat Register and be a member of the class in question.
For instance, your club might organise races every Monday evening for the classes
shown below.
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So Laser 1, Laser 2, etc. must be in the Lasers class. Fireball, Scorpion,
etc. must be in the Dinghy H'cap class. And so on. On Wednesday evenings the
Lasers might not have their own start but might sail with the other non-asymmetric
dinghies. So racing should be organised as shown below. Note that the
Lasers and the boats that were in the Dinghy H'cap class for Monday evenings also
need to be in the Non-Asym class so that they can take part on Wednesdays.
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Sometimes the club may organise races for all the boats on its Boat Register, so
it needs a class for that. Below you see that all the boats are members of
the All-In H'cap class.
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So all boats are members of at least two classes: their own
class and the All-In H'cap class. The Lasers and the non-asymmetric
dinghies are members of three classes because they sometimes sail together
in the Non-Asym class and sometimes sail separately in the Lasers and Dinghy
H'cap classes.
This is a typical structure for club racing. You should
note the following important points:
- Races are set in series. Each series is for one
class. Note that a series can have any number of races in it up to
42. It could have just one race.
- To take part in a race a boat must be in the Boat
Register and be a member of the class for which the series is organised.
- Each boat may be a member of several classes overall,
so that the fleet can be divided in different ways on different occasions.
- On any one occasion the races should be for classes
that divide up the boats unambiguously. In other words each boat
should be a member of one, and only one, class that is racing on that
occasion.
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