With the cancellation of this week’s Wags, I thought I’d take some time to talk about the concept of the Super Series. Some years ago (7 to be precise) the talk around the club was how could we boost the numbers in divisional sailing. It was always thought that Wags was a good introduction for skippers to gain experience in a large fleet. The sailing committee and myself, at the time agreed to the concept of a Super Series where the first Wednesday of each month in our sailing season (10 in all) would have each boats elapsed time, over a course, calculated and a Performance Based Handicap (PBH) applied to give a result. The PBH is adjusted just like the start times on a Wednesday to keep up with changes to boats and skippers/crews ability. There are drops after races 5/7/9.

The original idea was that at no stage would there be any change to the way Wags is conducted and if you didn’t know what Wednesday it was, you didn’t know your time elapsed was being recorded and you sailed Wags just like any other Wednesday. This was applied to both the Mono and Multi fleets. Mind you elapsed time is calculated weekly to cope with handicap changes!

I believe this concept worked a treat. All of the concepts above have been reached. The numbers in divisional have increased, albeit slightly. The numbers of competing boat in Wags has remained consistent (approx. 45 weekly) and the knowledge of sailing rules has improved. I can also report that elapsed times have lowered significantly. All of this can only be a benefit to our sport of sailing.

Safe Sailing, PB