Sailing

Race Officer

My race management experience started in the role of Fixtures Secretary at the Oxford University Yacht Club in the 2016/17 academic year. I was responsible for running three regattas.

The Oxford Magnum is one of the most competitive university team racing competitions of the year. Approximately 20 teams (school, university, and postgraduate level) are invited to sail over 2 days in 4 flights of Fireflies. Event organisation also requires the recruitment and coordiantion of an 8 person umpire team and a sizeable team of additional volunteers.

The Top Gun Invitational Trophy is a much more exclusive event to which the top 8 university teams are invited each year. The format is much more intense and tiring for the competitors who expect to sail a large number of very competitive races over the weekend.

The final event of the year is the university's intercollegiate Cuppers regatta. This is a single day event which invites entries from the university's constituent colleges of wildly varying abilities. An organisational challenge!

Since leaving Oxford I have been invited to act as race officer at a couple of events. These have included the Top Gun 2018, the BSDRA Southern Area Championships 2017, and the Oxford and Cambridge Varsity Match 2018.

Commentary

For three years I have provided the live event commentary for the RYA's flagship team racing regatta the Eric Twiname Youth and Junior Team Racing Championships. The two day event sees the country's top young sailors competing across two age categories with over 300 races sailed in total.

The commentary team provides a combination of video and audio coverage of the racing which is both transmitted live at the venue and also streamed online via social media. As of 2017 we have been able to employ on-the-water microphones to allow the commentators to follow the racing from motorboats which allows for a much more accurate commentating perspective.