Safety
You are responsible for your own safety provisions. By entering this event you assume all responsibility and liability for your own safety.
You must notify the race committee if you have an issue or drop out.
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.
The Kwindoo app is used to track your teams progress and it can be used to also see the location of the race committee and other teams.
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
Recommended equipment:
- At least 3 litres of water for each team member
- spare line, shackles, etc
- knife
- chicken lines
- electrical tape
Racing
The course will be published a few weeks before the event. Each day of racing will be comprised of at least 2 separate races.
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. Subsequent starts will be announced by the race committee either on kwindoo or whatsapp and also by flags.
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 Race Committee will continue to fly the orange flag throughout the race so that competitors can visually identify it.
There will not be any “signals made ashore” except the postponement flag.
Any changes to the course such as shorten course will be made on Kwindoo or Whatsapp and we won’t fly a flag. This is due to the large distances since you will probably not be able to see these flags on the RC boat.
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.If the Race committee is stopped near the finish line it does NOT indicate where the finish line is. The finish line is defined in Kwindoo. The Race Committee boat may be setting up for the next start, or just parked to get a good photo opportunity. Kwindoo will be used to record finish times but the GPS accuracy of your phone is about a half a boat length. In the event that boats finish within a half boat length then they will be scored a tie as detailed in RROS appendix A.
There might be intermediate gates on the course and you must sail through them. The gates will be virtual and it is each teams responsibility to identify these gates and sail the proper course through them. The purpose of these gates is to direct the course a certain way usually to avoid obstacles, or to provide navigational challenges.
If the wind is light the RC may cancel the last race or shorten the course. Race Committee instructions will be provided either by Kwindoo or whatsapp.
If you are over early you do not have to restart but rather we will add a time penalty of 3 times the number of seconds you are over early.
Kwindoo is power intensive and the phones could heat up and then the phone could lock up. Try to keep the phone out of the sun. The phone needs clear line of sight to the sky in order to get a good GPS signal so do not keep the phone in the tramp pocket or other hidden location. Check your phone regularely for instructions since you could be out of sight of the other teams and race committee.
The first race of each day will have a cut off time when we stop the race in order to start the next race. If you arrive after that time your Kwindoo tracking will stop and we will still score you but you have to provide us with your finish time.
The second race of the day: Sometimes we will not be able to wait for the entire fleet to finish before starting the second race since the boats can become quite spread out. There will be a time limit between the first boat finishing and the start of the second race probably be between 30-45 minutes.
The protest limit is 60 minutes from the time you finish the last race of the day.
You can paddle at any time.
Communication
The RC will send out notifications through Kwindoo, or whatsapp such as over early, shorten course, race cancelled etc. You can hail the RC on vhf on the assigned channel. Do not phone the RC.
A whatsapp (or discord) 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.
Monitor channel 69 on VHS.
Schedule: see the Schedule page