You spoke, we listened…
As most of you know, Shields Fleet 9 has seen a significant participation decline over the past decade or so and your fleet officers set out to find out why… and how we can revitalize enthusiasm in this great fleet. To do this, we set out to listen to both past and present owners via a survey sent out to investigate all sorts of options to get your feedback. And feedback is what we got.
For those that participated, thank you very much. We are excited to reveal the results of that survey and let you in on all the changes we’re planning for next season and beyond. In total, we received over 35 completed surveys, along with pages of comments and suggestions, and we read each and every one!
The Results….
First, you told us what you love about Wednesday Nights and what not to change, and that includes keeping it spinnaker racing, with all boats on one start, and keeping the three seasons’ of Weds Night Scoring exclusive of weekends.
But, we also heard that there are considerable frustrations over the early season start times, a degradation of sportsmanship on the water, and an over-emphasis on the top few winning boats over the engagement of more casual racers. To address these concerns, we have begun several initiatives for this coming season, including:
- Pushing start times back 30 mins for the Spring and Summer Season
- Hosting various clinics to help alleviate rules infractions
- Encouraging videos of starts and mark roundings posted on our website by those doing RC Duty
- Allowing the participation in both of our series among boats with roller furlers
- Introducing a special sub-series of awards for our more casual racers
- Investigating an affordable (optional) race tracking program to go back and re-watch your races to celebrate your wins and learn from your mistakes.
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For weekends, we’ve seen the largest drop off, so much of our ideas were focused on how to re-invigorate this series.
Here, you told us that weekends were different for everyone, so a mix of ideas was most important. To that end, we decided to offer a little of everything in the hopes you will join us.
- For some, the mid-day start time cuts into other activities, so for a few weekends, (not all) we’ll start a few hours later. We’ve also brought back the Sunday racing option.
- We also heard that doing the same thing every weekend gets boring, so next season we are offering a mix of traditional and non-traditional courses and destinations, including a first ever race-n-raft event to Mackerel Cove and back.
- But, we heard that early starting times (before noon) or designating all events as spinnaker were non-starters for most of you.
- Also, look forward to additional award categories and a few surprises to spice up our Aloha series for 2020.
The Notices of Race are Ready
Thanks to quick work by our amazing Ida Lewis YC Race Committee, the Wednesday Night Notice of Race and the Aloha Series Notice of Race are complete and available on our website with the full schedule of races. Mark your calendars and tell your crew to do the same!
http://shieldsfleet9.com/
In the meantime, our next fleet event is the Shields Tuning and Trim seminar on March 11th, hosted by North Sails in Portsmouth which already has more than 60 sailors signed up. If you haven’t signed up yet, click here. They will also be hosting a Crew-Finder event, 5:30-7:00pm, March 31st. We will be talking up the fleet and taking names of those interested; if you can join us at the Shields Fleet 9 table, you’ll get first pick of any new crew who stroll by! (More on that soon.)
Speaking of crew, we’re attempting to engage with high-school sailors this season and are looking for an owner who might be willing to loan their boat for some of the races to a supervised crew and/or anyone who needs crew and would like to be lined up with one or more young sailors on a regular basis. Let us know if you’re interested.
Last but not least, we expect to have our Spring Registration Party in mid-April, likely with another dose of rules education. We’ll get the date to you soon!
Thinking spring,
The Fleet Officers
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