Vaucluse Challenge This Saturday
Andrew Cox
The first of the two legs in this season’s Vaucluse Challenge races will be held this coming Saturday, 30 November. This is a seminal event in our calendar, where we do battle with our friends from the French Enclave to defend the honour of the title of champions of the main harbour! The racing will be held in “neutral waters”, somewhere up near Nielsen Park / Rose Bay – note, it will take much longer to sail to the course area, so we are encouraging all boats to launch immediately after the 1pm briefing – get rigged and dressed before 1pm.
Vaucluse Yacht Club will be hosting a BBQ after racing. Could all sailors please plan to attend this? We will be driving two RIBs to Vaucluse, and will also take several cars.
This leg of the Vaucluse Challenge will comprise two ~45min races, with separate fleet starts for Radials / 4.7s and Standards. Details of the course location and format will be provided at the briefing. The scoring system includes points for overall best boats, as well as for best boats in each age category (open, apprentice, masters, GM, GGM, etc) as set out below, so everyone has a chance to contribute to the outcome. After conclusion of the second leg of the Vaucluse Challenge (which will be held in conjunction with the Vaucluse Regatta in the new year), the perpetual Vaucluse Challenge Shield will be awarded for the following season to the club with the lowest points in aggregate, and there are also perpetual trophies for best Radial sailor (the Dene Bergman trophy) and best Standard sailor (the Graham Reid trophy), based on lowest individual aggregate positions in the fleet.
The details of the scoring in each race are as follows: (a) overall best boats – the first four boats in each fleet from each club will get a score of 1 to 8 in their order of finishing (regardless of their actual finish position in the fleet); (b) best boats in each age category – in each age category, the number of boats (“n”) from each fleet from each club that will be scored are the lesser of (i) one third of the boats in that fleet in that age category and (ii) the number of boats in that fleet in that age category from the club with the smallest number of boats in that age category, and the first “n” boats from each fleet from each club will get a score of 1 to 2n in their order of finishing (regardless of their actual finish position in the fleet). Note, for the purposes of (b), if there are less than six boats in total and not at least one boat from each club in an age category in that fleet, the boats from that age category in that fleet will be combined with the boats in the age category above in that fleet for scoring purposes; and if there are insufficient boats in the oldest category in that fleet, the boats in that age category in that fleet will be combined with the age category below in that fleet for scoring purposes. Clear? Haha