Rick’s Rants and Raves

Dante watches his opponent, taken by Heather Odenweller

Yesterday, I coordinated my first Rain Gutter Regatta. My son had raced in three previous regattas, and I had talked with the previous Cubmaster about the logistics of running the regatta for our 16-scout pack, and it seemed pretty easy. This year, we had an incredibly successful recruiting drive, and now have 45 registered scouts. With that many scouts, I knew I couldn’t just wing it the day of the race. I had to be prepared. What follows are the things I did, or should have done.

One month prior to race

A month out, I made sure that the pack was aware of the race coming up on the calendar. Since we race in the fall, that means I started talking about it at our very first meeting. During the previous winter, our gutters had been irreparably damaged, so we needed new ones. When I started talking about the regatta, I also asked if any parents had resources that could get us cheap or discounted gutters. During an adult leaders meeting, we clarified the draft rules that we’d worked on in the previous year.

Two weeks prior to race

Two weeks before the race I bought the sailboat kits at the local Scout shop and printed out the rules. Prior to den meetings one night, I talked about the regatta again, and discussed the rules, making sure that no one had any questions. The den leaders then handed out the kits and rules to each scout. Many of the den leaders held “regatta clinics” for their meetings.

I’d not gotten any positive response from the pack families about sources for gutter, so I placed a call to a local roofing & gutter company. Thanks to hurricane Ike, we’d recently spent thousands of dollars with the company to have our roof replaced, so I specifically asked to speak with my former salesman. I re-introduced myself and explained my role in the pack and the upcoming regatta. I then asked if I could get a quote on 4 gutters, 12 feet each, capped at both ends. I hoped they would donate the gutters to the pack, but I also understood they might not, and we’d have to figure out how to pay for it. A couple of days later, the salesman called back and told me they would make the gutters for free.

One week prior to race

In the days approaching the race, I solicited volunteers to help with the regatta. Here’s what I asked for: 2 pairs of saw horses, adults to help set up,  an adult to check in racers, and two adults to officiate the races. After a few days I had commitments for the saw horses, and the check-in role. When I asked for help with the remaining roles 2 days before the race, I got a number of people saying “I’ll do whatever. Just let me know”. At that point I stopped worrying about having people signed up.

I arranged to have the new gutters delivered to my house a couple of days before the race. I offered to pick them up (they were free, after all) but the salesman pressed that delivering them would be easier on him.

I contacted the church where we meet to ask that the custodian put a hose on the spigot near where we’ve typically raced. The hose wasn’t long enough to reach where I really wanted to put the gutters, so we had to scramble at the last second to get an extension. Fortunately, my assistant had some hose that was easy to grab, and was still home when I called.

I also worked on my race organization. More on that below. I created the documents needed, and communicated this information to my check-in person.

This kind of event just demands to be photographed. I knew that one of the parents in my pack was a professional photographer, so a few days before the race, I specifically asked if she would take pictures, to which she agreed. She probably would have anyway, but knowing that I’d asked, she probably took more pictures of more scouts than she might have otherwise.

Race Day

I bought the regatta participation patches at the Scout shop the day of the race. I probably should have done this earlier, but these were optional at that time anyway. I wanted to give them to the scouts at check in if possible, rather than waiting for a pack meeting.

I bought the straws for the scouts to use in the races. I made sure I had enough extra for some to hit the ground accidentally. This could have been done sooner, but it worked out fine for me.

I printed out my race-related documents (see below).

20 minutes prior to race

I arrived at the race location and started unloading, and was immediately met by a couple of volunteers. Sawhorses arrived moments later. Then we discovered the hose shortage. I called the person most likely to a) have some readily accessible hose and b) still be at home. He delivered on both counts and had the extra hose to us in under 10 minutes.

I reviewed the check-in process with the person who’d volunteered for the role. I also picked two adults to officiate the races, and went over the key parts of the rules:

• Scouts are allowed to right a boat that has tipped over.
• Scouts may not push the boat forward by hand or straw.
• If the race judge determines that a Scout has pushed the boat, and that Scout wins the race, the race will be re-run. If the Scout is judged to have pushed his boat a second time, he automatically loses the race.

I also reviewed the group sheets (see below) with the judges.

Check In

The scouts lined up  to check-in for the race. I had printed out group sheets and scout reminder sheets and the check-in parent organized the kids like this:

• Scout approaches, ready for check in. Parent asks for his name, den and boat style (catamaran or sailboat).
• Parent finds (or starts, if needed) a group sheet that matches his den and boat style (“class” on the sheet), then write his name down in the next open slot (#1, #2, #3 or #4).
• If the scout is the first one on a sheet, the parent gives the group a number that will be unique. I anticipated that we would have 9-10 groups total. Since we had two pairs of gutters, we had to choose a gutter: white or brown. I wanted these to be reasonably balanced (approx 5 each).
• The check-in parent then fills out a Scout Reminder sheet with name, group # and gutter assignment, and hands it to the scout with a participation patch and straw.
• When a group sheet is full (with 4 scouts), the sheet  was taken to a race judge to begin the racing.

The race sheets were designed to allow for 4 scout groups racing in round-robin style, e.g. each scout raced every scout in their group. This design (rather than single or double elimination) makes it easy to add scouts as they arrive.

Its important to note that we kept catamarans and sailboats separate. We’d learned in previous years that catamarans have a clear advantage (unfair, even) over the standard sailboat design. This year we decided to race them as separate classes, and have two winners, to keep the races fair.

Racing

As the race sheets were brought to the judges, they started running the races, a group at a time. There were two ways to determine a clear group winner:

1. one of the scouts won all three races
2. if two scouts won two races, the group winner would be the scout who’d won when they’d raced head-to-head.

Technically it would be possible for three scouts to each win two races. That didn’t happen in our groups, but I figured we’d run a quick three-way race-off (1v2, 1v3, 2v3) to determine the winner.

I collected finished race sheets from the judges, preparing for semi-finals. As it turned out, we had 7 sailboat groups and 2 catamaran groups.

For the sailboats, we had two semi-final groups. It should have been a group of 4 and a group of 3, but I made a mistake and put one scout in both. Fortunately, the judges adjusted appropriately, and we ended up with a clear winner from each semi-final group. The final for the sailboats was just one race (it was getting dark!).

For the catamarans, I decided to allow a final 4 scout group since there were two group winners, and two other scouts who’d each won 2 of their three semi-final races.

Materials Needed on Race Day

• Gutters
• Pair of Saw horses for each pair of gutters
• Group sheets
• Scout reminder sheets
• Clipboards (1 check-in + 1 for each pair of gutters)
• participation patches
• folding chair for check-in
• card table for check-in
• shims for gutters to level them

All in all, it went very smoothly. We had 35 racers and ran 73 races in about an hour. The kids had a great time.

After the race

While everyone was still there, I announced the winners and runners-up, and made sure that everyone had a great time. When I got home I sent an e-mail to the pack documenting the winners in writing, and thanking all the volunteers who’d helped to make the event a success. When the photographer had posted the photos, I shared them with everyone.