What’s life like on the committee boat during a sailing regatta? I’ve wondered that over the past decade while racing in our annual regatta. I’ve also sailed under an increasing guilt as I pass on the request for committee boat volunteers each year.
This year it was time to pay the debt. My normal sailing crew, my kids, were mostly preoccupied with other engagements so I went ahead and volunteered Unsinkable 2 for Committee Boat duty. This meant teaming up with a group of people I likely wouldn’t know until the day of the race so I was a little hesitant about who I’d end up spending a very long day with on the boat! But by the end I had learned a lot about racing and met people I’m looking forward to sailing with in the future.
Racing is pretty casual with the local sailors. Penalties are paid during the race with an on-your-honor 360 degree turn, we have no measurer, and the entire season’s series happens over 3-5 races held the first Saturday of June. There’s a reason this venue has never been taken seriously as a contender for the America’s Cup.
But. It’s a really fun group, and it sure works for us.
On board that day we had an electrician, a psychiatrist, an attorney, a videographer under contract from the Lake Commission, and a sailing instructor who under the unrelenting heat of the afternoon sun eventually divulged that she actually wanted to be a pool cleaner. About the only thing we all had in common was a love adventure and wanderlust, which it turns it is more than enough.
Only one of us had been a judge previously, so she gave the orders. The jobs seemed easy enough: someone to run the radio, another to call out times on the clock, one to raise the various division and starting sequence flags, and another to operate the air horn (aimed away from the boat.) But by the time you kick off 3 divisions, each 10 minutes apart including a 5 minute countdown sequence, it gets rather hectic, as captured in the unstaged photo below.
The committee boat is a great photography platform for shooting all the boats out on the water. Much easier than trying to do it from the deck of a boat actively racing.
Once the flag drops to start the last division, life on the committee boat slows down to a very leisurely pace. If the wind is light, the race may take 2-3 hours, if it’s breezy, the first boats are back in about 45 minutes. We settled in to great discussion, snacks, and lots of laughing.
Being a mountain lake, wind conditions can change significantly over the course of a couple hours. It’s not uncommon that a course change needs to be made during the race due to too much or too little wind. I always thought the committee knew exactly what they were doing when they made such changes. Now, being in-person for the discussions, I realized how difficult the decisions were, and how much best guessing is involved. The committee is making a best guess about conditions at distant points on the course without much data, and has to make decisions in time to not affect lead boats. There were a couple such decisions to be made that day, shortening one race and doubling the length of another.
We had one crew member about who had never sailed, so as soon as the last boat crossed the finish line, we raised sails and took a little longer getting back to the marina so she could experience real sailing first hand.
By day’s end, we’d made new friends pulled off another successful race. Next year? I think we’ll all be back to racing, but with a new appreciation for those on next year’s committee boat.