ORLEANS YACHT CLUB

Race Committee & Volunteers

All OYC race committee leadership positions for OYC adult racing are volunteers positions. In addition to the leadership positions, the race committee relies on a large set of people who a few times a season volunteer to help aboard the race committee boat or safety boats.

The leadership positions include:

Race Committee Co-Chairs

The race committee chair is an OYC Executive Committee position. As with some other executive committee positions, the co-chairs share a single vote (disagreement among co-chairs is recorded as an "abstain"). There currently are two race committee co-chairs.

Principle Race Officers

For a given race day or regatta, the Principle Race Officers (PRO) is in charge of the race committee and running the races. A PRO must be thoroughly familiar with the Racing Rules of Sailing and the OYC published Notice or Race and Sailing Instructions for the event and should be very familiar how OYC runs races and should have racing experience in some class of sailboats. Currently there are five people available to serve as PRO for OYC adult club races and regattas.

Volunteers are needed for each race day to fill the following positions. No experience is needed to volunteer to help on the race committee boat or to assist on a safety boat for club series race days.

Scorer

The scorer is one of the volunteers on the race committee boat, but with a specific task. Scoring is quite easy. If no experienced scorer is available for a club series race, a volunteer can score with instruction from the PRO.

Race Committee Boat Volunteer

The race committee boat volunteers play an important role at race starts and the scorer plays an important role at race finishes. At race starts the race committee provides the visual (flags) and audible (horn) signals to start the race. The start sequence is simple and no prior experience is required to help with clear instructions from the PRO.

Safety Boat Operator

The safety boat operator does need some experience. Those who know how to operate a motorboat can step into this after volunteering to help on the safety boat a few times with one of the more experienced safety boat operators. In addition to knowing how to operate a motorboat the safety boat operator must know the role of the safety boat in setting and moving race marks, where to position the boats to follow the race but stay out of the way, and in the event of a capsize when and how to provide assistance.

Safety Boat Volunteer

The person assisting on the will help set the race marks (large buoys marking the race course) and retrieve them. Often the marks need to be moved between races. During the race the two safety boats track the race, on out of the way near the front of the fleet and one out of the way near the back of the fleet. Capsizes are rare but the safety boat volunteer may have to assist in righting a capsize by holding a sailboat sidestay or a line while the safety boat operator uses the powerboat to gently back the powerboat and right the sailboat. The volunteer may drive the powerboat at the discretion of the safety boat operator. Since most races are run in light to moderate winds, during the races the safety boats normally just follow the race and often bring a camera and take photos.

The current leadership is listed on the Adult Racing Leadership page. Information about volunteering for race committee positions is on the Information for Race Committee Volunteers page. The volunteer schedule is online on the Race Committee Volunteer Schedule page.