HLSTC Championship Rules 2024 - PROVISIONAL

This document contains the Rules for the Club Championship at HLSTC from 2024.

1. Participation in the Club Sailing Championship is open to all sailing members of the Club. The object of the competition is to identify and reward the most capable sailors.

2. A participant can accumulate championship points through sailing in the club's main racing series, and at the end of the year, the member with the most championship points becomes the Club Champion. Awards are made to the Champion and to the next four places.

3. A main series is one that is open to all members, and scheduled to run for at least three weeks, and to include at least six races. Sixteen such series are scheduled in 2024. To become qualified for the award of points, the member must actually sail in at least 30% of the races scheduled for the series. (RO and OOD duties can score points towards the series total, but they do not count towards the 30% required for qualification purposes.)

4. At the completion of each series, points are awarded to qualifiers according to the following scale: 25 points for the series winner, 18 for second place, and so on through 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2, to 1 point for 10th place, except for minor series (see following). If there are fewer than ten qualifiers, the given number of points is awarded to the qualifiers only.

5. A series will be termed a minor series, if the number of races actually sailed is less than six, or if the number of qualifiers is less than eight; points will still be awarded, but at a reduced scale of 12, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. No points will be awarded if the number of races sailed is less than three.

6. A member automatically makes an entry to a series by participating in any race of the series. The entry covers the named member and a single dinghy class, and includes a handicap (PY/PN) figure for the class. If the class has a number of variant configurations (e.g. Aero, Laser/ILCA) with different handicaps, the member needs to specify which variant is to be recorded against the entry, which will then cover the specified variant and any less powerful one. The handicap recorded against the entry will be the one used in calculating all race results for the series.

7. If the member subsequently sails in the same series with a boat of a class that is not covered by an existing entry, a separate entry will be made, with the member’s name again, but with the details of the new class, and the entry will be treated as if it was for a different person; each entry will then be updated as appropriate until the end of the series.

8. If the member has an entry for a variant class, and sails in the series with a more powerful variant than those covered by the entry, the default action in a handicap race series is for the original entry to be updated to show the more powerful variant, and the series results to be recalculated. The member may alternatively choose (before the start of the final race in the series) to treat the variant like a different class, and start an additional entry for it, and subsequently use either entry as appropriate. If the same situation arises in a pursuit race series, it will always cause an additional entry to be created.

9. Whenever a member has more than one entry in use by the end of a series, the entry that is most favourable to the member will be considered for championship points; other entries will be disregarded.

10. On days when weather conditions make it advisable, members are encouraged, in the interests of safety, to choose a less powerful sail configuration, e.g. by reefing, or using smaller sails, or, where applicable, a less powerful class variant rig; they will continue with the same handicap as before.

11. At the end of the year, each member’s championship points are totalled up, and awards are made to the five members with the highest point totals. The totals include the applicable points from all series, whether from a single class or from a mixture of different classes or variants. In the event of a tie for any place, the tie-break rules of the Racing Rules of Sailing (Appendix A8) are applied.