Further Reading: Lifeboat Week

Twickenham Yacht Club Lifeboat Week - Race Officer Notes

Lifeboat week (LBW) is a series of 5 evening pursuit races with the aim of racing money for the RNLI charity.

A pursuit race is unlike our normal racing where the Portsmouth yardstick (PY) handicaps are applied to the finishing times to calculate positions. Instead a time duration is set for the race and the PY numbers are used to calculate the starting times for each boat. This means that the slowest boat starts first and the fastest boat last. The faster boats then pursue the slower boats around the course to try and pass them before the set finishing time.

For the handicapping to be fair it is vital to end the race as near as possible to the set time. If it is stopped early the slower boats have the advantage, if its stopped late then the faster boats will gain advantage. So to be fair boat positions on the water need to be recorded at the set finishing time.

For us at Twickenham with the limitations of the river we cannot set a very long course so we have to record lap positions as each boat completes a lap (as we would do in a normal race). Some boats will usually be very close at the finish, which is the aim of a pursuit race. So usually having a second support boat on the water helps to determine actual positions more accurately, some boats might be a long way down river away from the start line or race hut. The RO should stop the race as soon as they have all of the positions by sounding the siren.

The RYA have a free spreadsheet on their Portsmouth Yardstick page for calculating the start times on day 1. We aim for a finish time off 20:30. You set the time of the race from the slowest boat likely to be racing in our case this could be a Topper. So as to give the Solos and Enterprises a race of nearly 1 hour I usually set the start time for the Topper a little before 19:30, making the race a little over an hour.

To make the racing more interesting and closer during the week we apply handicaps to the finishing position for the next evenings race. 1st place starts 3 minutes later, 2nd 2 minutes and 3rd 1 minute. Last place starts 3 minutes later, second from last 2 minutes and third from last 1 minute. This handicapping continues through the week so potentially if 1 boat won every night it would be starting 15 minutes later by the end of the week. Again to add interest an extra buoy is added each evening. We start with 3 buoys on Monday and should end up with 7 on Friday. With more buoys the Race Officer (RO) can be inventive setting the course to be followed each evening.

A diagram of the evenings course should be posted either on the race hut board or using the sailing WhatsApp. It is important that the support boat crews particularly towards the end of the week arrive in plenty of time to set out the courses.

In 2026 we labelled the buoys with letters to help the competitors follow the correct course. We also gave the competitors the option of a donation to the RNLI instead of taking the usual penalty turns if they infringed or received help from the support boat to continue racing.

When starting the boats the loud hailer can be very useful allowing the RO to alert the boats due to to start next. The starts are all whole minutes apart, there are no seconds involved. I usually give the first boat to start a 3 minute warning using sound and the handicap flag. After that the starts follow at their set times just giving a sound signal. In theory each competitor should know when they are due to start, but I try to give them as much help as possible using the loud-hailer. It is easier as RO to start the race from the race hut, but the steps can be used or alternatively a committee boat should you choose to do so (maybe to get better wind).

The RO potentially has a lot more to do than in a normal race so an experienced Assistant RO can be invaluable making the task much easier.

Competitors are free to sail however many of the evenings they want or can do. Competitors who take on a duty during the week are awarded a second place, but not given a time penalty as a result.

At the end of the 5 evenings the best of 3 results count (2 results can be discarded). In the event of ties the normal scoring rules apply. If a competitor does not sail 3 races they are scored as DNS which means they are awarded points to the value of the total number of sailing in LBW + 1. For example if 12 boats sailed during the week they would score 13 for a DNS. A retirement scores as the number of boats sailing that evening +1. First you look back through the scoring positions so for example if 2 competitors had scores of 1,2,4 and the second competitor had 1,3,3 The first competitor would win as a 2 beats a 3. If they both had a 1,2,3 whoever had the best position in the last race sailed would be the winner.

There is a cup the Smithy cup which is awarded at the annual ball/prize giving for the winner. All of competitors usually get a small token at the Friday night party.

Compiled by Edward Skinner, June 2026.