Gabriel - Yes agreed, if you are on OCS you fouled up and take the consequences. It is the poor RO that I feel for (Charles, I will make sure Joan sees your comments as she is one of our duty ROs). I try and put our newer members on as ARO where possible so they can get an opportunity to watch how people start and how different tactics work according to wind and tide but we also have the problem that some do not turn out.
We use 5,4,1,0 and I think it preferable as the 3 minute gap in the middle gives people time to manoeuvre on the line more - except perhaps in very light wind conditions - and those are the conditions when the melee between fleets is most likely to occur as no one wants to be too far from the line.
I will have a look at Andrew's web pages as I want to do a plain English exercise on our instructions for the less experienced members.
Our SIs follow Bob's general format but we use the standard flags. However if we have a second start before an OCS boat from the 1st start has corrected the error then we will need a different OCS flag for the second fleet. I will have to think about that as we already have GR, IR and Abandon flags bound on ready as well as two shorten course flags.
As we use lights for the start sequence I will have to consider adding some extra colours for IR and GR. The existing light sequence is performed by just operating switches marked 5,4,1,0 in order and that does the right colours as required by logic switching.
