Safety
You are responsible for your own safety provisions and notifying the race committee in case of any problems. By entering this event you assume all responsibility and liability for your own safety. Monitor channel 68 on VHS. We will have one rescue boat.
You must notify the race committee if you have an issue or drop out. We have had to in the past go looking for people in the middle of the night and we didn’t know where they were or what the problem was.
Redress will be given for any boat that assists a competitor.
If you need to pull out early from a leg there are many boat launches throughout the route. We will supply a map with these.
Familiarize yourself with the marine charts. There are many obstructions. The Navionics app is highly recommended.
Required equipment:
- A small anchor (could be a sea anchor) and 100′ of line . The anchor line should run through the forestay bridle so that when deployed the bows are into the wind.
- 2 long paddles. Put them somewhere that is easily accessable.
- A flashlight
- The Kwindoo tracking app on a phone attached to each person is required. Kwindoo uses a lot of power so also use an external battery pack. If both phones run out of power we will estimate your time, no guarantees we will get it right. See page on tracking for Kwindoo setup.
- A VHS radio
Racing
The start for the first race of each day will be on GPS time as published on the schedule for each leg. Competitors can start any time after the published GPS time and there may not be a start signal or flags, just watch Kwindoo to ensure you are not OCS.
The start line will consist of the Race Committee boat on one end and a mark at the pin end. The start direction will be in the direction of the course so the start may be downwind or on a reach. The Race Committee boat will fly a large solid orange flag.
The finish line: we will not have a physical finish line so look on Kwindoo to ensure that you have finished. The finish line will be large so it will be hard to miss.
There might be intermediate gates on the course and you must sail through them. The purpose of these gates is to direct the course a certain way usually to avoid obstacles, or to provide navigational challenges.
Each day of racing will be comprised of at least 2 separate races. If the wind is light the RC may cancel the last race. At that point alternate finishing instructions will be provided either by Kwindoo or radio.
The first race of the day will have a cut off time when we stop the race. If you come in after that time we will still score you but you have to provide us with your finish time.
The second race of the day: we will set a start line and then you can start whenever you want and we will calculate the net time. This way we don’t have to wait for the entire fleet to catch up. To clarify: we will not wait for the entire fleet to finish before starting the second race since the boats can become quite spread out.
The protest limit is 60 minutes from the time you finish.
You can paddle at any time.
Communication
The RC will send out notifications through Kwindoo such as over early, shorten course, race cancelled etc. You can hail the RC on vhf on the assigned channel. Also a whatsapp group will be created so that people can communicate to the RC or to other boats.
Please notify the RC through whatsapp in the event of an issue, retiring from the race or not starting.
Schedule: see the Schedule page