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Ken: Last August I was the principal race officer for the Shark World Championship regatta. I was led to the concept of a segmented starting line by a member of our international jury and the idea was subsequently reinforced by a good friend, Paul Hays, who assisted us on the race course. We had 63 boats on a starting line consisting of a pin end boat, mid-line boat and starboard end boat plus a signal boat 100 yards to windward of the mid-line boat so that all could see and hear our signals. We conducted 11 races and had only 1 general recall. In most races we called boats OCS. We never even considered using a black flag – the segmented line gave us all the traffic control we needed. Ken, thank you for such a brilliant solution. Without it we’d have been black flagging the fleet left right and centre – instead we ran a clean regatta. Please feel free to add the 2009 Shark Worlds as a testimonial to the wisdom of using the segmented starting line.

Thanks all for your comments Tim, We signal individual recall with horn and flag X from Signal boat. We also fly X from all line boats until all racers are clear (or four minutes). The best courtesy is hailing from all four line boats with powered loud hailers. We begin at two minutes hailing groups that flag I is up and the one-minute is about to commence. From one minute on we hail individuals that they are over so they can begin exoneration. Ray, having three line segments that are not perfectly straight, sagged in the middle, does not make the ends closer to the first mark. With a 1000′ start line and a 3000′ first leg set upwind from the middle of the line actually makes the middle much closer to the first mark. The mid-line boats are treated just like the end boats, as marks. Yes someone could start just to the left of one, then tack to port but, they better tack back before hitting the wave of starboard boats. Regarding running races as fair as possible, I rarely try to do this. Instead, I try to make the races as fun as possible. That includes making them very fair in championships but perfection is not possible as sailboat racing is such an imperfect sport. In college championships I try to time the starts with wind shifts that come down from the windward mark but in minor regattas I let wacky shifty starts go unless the fleet is laying the windward mark. Just last month I sent an 90 boat Opti fleet around a large island because it was fun to sail down a scenic river and finish right in front of the club. The best kid still won and all (nearly all, a few capsized) finished with huge smiles. Ken Legler

Interesting Article Thankyou. Question: How did you manage signalling individual recalls, by each section of line, so flag & sound signal on each starboard end boat? and if you had, had to what was the general recall plan? Any chance of seeing you sailing instructions and procedures/instructions to starting personnel. Thanks Tim