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Officers of the Day: OOD & AOD

Racing is managed by an experienced and competent Race Officer (Club Byelaw 14), generally known as the Officer of the Day, or OOD. They are helped by an AOD (Assistance Officer of the Day), who doesn't need any experience, just a willingness to help.

Your are in charge

As OOD you are in charge of all aspects of the race for the day, including ensuring that other duties are fulfilled. During the week before your duty, you should check that you have a full complement of volunteers (if you are logged in to the website, the duties are listed against each event in the calendar) and that they are still available.

IMPORTANT - contact your team: Reminders are sent out to for all duties, but we cannot check whether they are received. There have been numerous reports of members failing to attend their duties, so if you don't check, you risk having to find someone to fill in on the day.

You should contact each member of your team to check that they will be attending. You can send them a message through the website by clicking on their name, they will receive a notification by email and can response to you in the same way.

If individual members have made their contact details viewable you can see them by clicking on their name, if they haven't you will need to do the following to get their contact details from the admin side of the website:

- go here and log in

- if you can't get in, go here to get a new password

- go to "Contacts" (use navigation or click here)

- search for the member in question

Sorry it's a bit painful, but that's the joys of the GDPR regulations. And remember, the earlier you do this, the longer there is to sort out a swap.

Risk Management

There is a new Risk Management protocol in place. This is detailed in the GUIDE TO RISK MANAGEMENT FOR RACE OFFICERS, which you can download at the bottom of this page - please ensure you read it carefully before your duty starts.

Race management

Your race management duty is to assess weather, tide and water conditions before and during the race, the types of boats competing, the skill levels and experience of the crews and the availability of Safety Boat Cover before making a decision on whether it is safe to run, and to continue to run, any race.

Based on this assessment, you core responsibility is to:

advise the fleet of your assessment of the conditions through the Signing on Notice.
set a course that is appropriate to the same.
advise Novice and / or Under 16 sailors not to take part in a race if they deem that conditions may make it unsafe for inexperienced sailors to race.
advise the fleet of the status of Safety Boat Cover.

Please see the GUIDE TO BEING A RACE OFFICER download at the bottom of this page for more details.

Entering results

Following the race, you need to enter the results into Halsail. There is a laptop in the OOD's hut and instructions in Race Officer's Guide (also in the GUIDE TO ENTERING RESULTS ON HALSAIL below). If you need any help, please speak to Tom Barnes, or if he is not around to Steve Hobbs or Martin Clapham.

Questions

If you have any questions, please contact the Sailing Secretary (Laurence Russel) via the contact facility on the website.

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Last updated 16:29 on 19 June 2025

Officers of the Day: OOD & AOD

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