Auckland, 0700 Thursday
AMRC Day Two (of Five)
As you will have read on our
main team website Dicko & co. on 4-2 (wins-losses) got off to a good start in yesterday's opening day of the
Auckland Match Racing Cup. Bert's team, on 3-3, had not quite as good a day but are definitely in the hunt.
PRO Harold Bennett managed to get through Flight Six before calling it a day. Three more flights this morning to complete Round Robin One, then Round Robin Two will get under way and continue into tomorrow (Friday). Then the semis on Saturday and Finals Sunday.
Whoa! Flight? Round robin? Semis and Finals? Some have already written to ask, how does this all work??
Pretty standard, actually, and the format will be familiar to most sailors. For non-sailors, however, a BOB match racing primer may be in order:
+ Most match racing events have eight, ten or twelve teams competing. Here there are ten.
+ Round Robins (Thursday and Friday). The first phase of competition is normally one or two "round robins" (yes, technically "rounds robin" but let's not be pedantic, Mr Fisher) with each team racing each of the other teams once per round robin. Here there are two RRs.
+ A "flight" is one set of matches during a round robin. With ten teams competing here there are five matches in each flight; in turn a round robin consists of nine flights (again, so that each of the ten teams races each of the other nine teams once per RR). The five matches in each flight are raced consecutively over the same small race track, and starting on five minute intervals. Each match takes about 30-40 minues, so a "flight" of five matches takes 50-60 minutes to complete.
+ A "pairing list" is drawn up by the Race Committee into which teams are randomly seeded before the regatta starts. Therefore each team knows in which order they will race against their opponents during the round robin(s). We took a photo of the pairing list (doubling as a score sheet) and posted it here on the blog yesterday. Normally the pairing list is simply repeated for the second round robin.
+ Boat assignment. In theory, the boats and sails are nearly identical and essentially equal. In practice inevitably there are small differences, but the regatta organizers work hard to minimize them. Teams are assigned boats by random draw, and use the same boat for all matches in a given day (as swapping boats is not as easy as it might sound given that each team needs to tinker with their boat, within the rules, to get it set up to suit their individual sailing styles). However, on long days of racing the RC may opt to re-draw and swap boats midway through the day just to further help level the equipment playing field.
+ Number of races and RR scoring. Ten teams, and two round robins in which each team races each of the other nine teams once, means a total of 18 matches for each team during the round robin phase (a total of 90 matches for the RC to complete over two days -- no easy feat!). A team scores one point for each win, zero for a loss. At the end of the second round robin (after each team has raced 18 matches), the four teams with the most wins, hence points, advance to the semi-finals. The other six teams go home. Ties are broken in favor of the team with the most wins in the matches between the tied teams; or, if that doesn't break the tie, in favor of the team which won the last match between the tied teams. Three- or more-way ties get complicated, but can all be broken under the rules.
+ Semi-finals (Saturday). The team with the most points at the end of the RRs gets to choose which of the other three teams they will race in their semi final. The semis, of course, are head-to-head competition, with the first team to win two matches being the winner and advancing to the finals. (At this regatta the semis winner is the "first-to-win-two-matches"; however, first-to-win-three is much preferred by the sailors, time permitting).
+ Finals (Sunday). Normally this is first-to-win-three, as it is here at the AMRC. Concurrently a
petit-final (or "consolation" as you
Norte Americanos might call it) is run between the losers of the semis to determine third and fourth place overall.
The tricky thing for the race committee, of course, is fitting all these matches in given the biggest variable in our sport -- the weather. There are rules upon rules for short-cutting and back-stopping should not all matches in a round robin or, heaven forbid, the semis or finals, be able to be completed. But let's not go there, because, the weather forecast for the rest of this regatta looks like this:
Courtesy of WeatherUnderground.
It is still overcast this morning, so let's hope it gives way to sunshine sooner than later. Not that we need the heat (and fires) they will be getting up in Melbourne again this weekend!
So, bottom line, Teams Dicko and Bert need to win enough races during the round robins to finish among the top four teams so they can advance to the semis on Saturday. Then it's a new ballgame. In most match racing events a winning average of around 70% during the RRs will assure you of getting to the semis -- in this case 13 wins and 5 losses should do the trick.
Team Dicko in action yesterday. Chris Dickson (right) on the helm,
Robbie Naismith (center, foreground) headsail trimmer, Paul Westlake
(behind Robbie) mainsail trimmer, Jamie Gail (left) pit. Bowman Kazuhiko
Sofuku, up on the bow, is not pictured.
Above, Team Bert. Bertrand Pace on the helm (right), main trimmer
Rod Dawson (center, foreground), headsail trimmer Zach Hurst (center,
standing behind Rod), and Sean Clarkson (left) pit. Again the bowman, in
this case Brad Webb, is forward and not pictured.
The person in the second photo, above, hanging on aft is an "umpire observer" -- not a crew member -- and perhaps a blog post for another day. Both photos courtesy of
Ivor Wilkins.
And lest you think from Ivor's photos that it was clear sailing yesterday, the pic below, courtesy of
Richard Gladwell, gives you an idea of how murky, albeit warm, it was most of the day. A reminder that you can click on most photos on the BOB to open an enlarged version in another window, and the following is a good one to enlarge....
Team Bert leads ETNZ's Dean Barker off the starting line in Flight Two
yesterday. Speaking of umpire observers, the arms in the air (with orange
sleeves to aid viewing by the umpiring trailing in the RIB) means that
"the yachts are overlapped" -- that is, some parts of the two boats are
side-by-side as opposed to one boat being clear ahead and the other
clear astern (of an imaginery line perpendicular to the "stern", or back
end, of the lead yacht -- hence the positioning of the "umpire observers"
on the sterns). "Overlap" or "clear" is critical to boat-to-boat tactics
at any given moment -- which yacht has right-of-way often changes when
an overlap is established or broken. 
The entire team relies on a smooth and efficiently-run Base.
Base Operations and Logistics Mgr Grant Davidson -- "What
Guthrie's also pretty good when it comes to the logistics of a)
The entire team relies on a smooth and efficiently-run Base.)
Base Operations and Logistics Mgr Grant Davidson -- "What)
Guthrie's also pretty good when it comes to the logistics of a)
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