THE WELL-FOUND PRO

by John Slater

“You have been asked to go to another yacht club to serve as the PRO for a major one-design regatta. You do not know anything about the resources available at that club. What personal equipment should you bring with you?”

That’s the question the US SAILING Race Management Handbook asks on page 179, in the introduction to a section on personal race management equipment. The answer probably varies somewhat from PRO to PRO, but almost certainly includes a pile of stuff. That’s why you always see visiting PROs hauling those big bags around with them.

That pile of stuff also costs a pile of money, but the good news is that you don’t have to have everything all at once. You can ease into ownership, acquiring a little bit here and a little bit there.

When I started running races 20 years ago, I already had a Timex Ironman with countdown mode that I used when racing my Flying Scot. I still use a version of the same watch. The first piece of equipment I bought specifically for race management was a hand-bearing compass, the kind that looks like a hockey puck that you can hang around your neck on a cord.

I bought it because I was always misplacing the Davis pistol-grip model that my yacht club provided on the signal boat.

The next thing I acquired was a referee’s whistle and another lanyard to hang around my neck. I still use it, too, as a backup sound device.

With those three items—a timepiece, a compass, and a sound signal—I had everything I needed to read the wind, lay a course, and start a race. (We’re talking personal equipment here. My club provided the signal boat, the marks, and the visual signals.) But of course I didn’t stop there. I went on acquiring stuff until I had almost everything listed in the Race Management Handbook.

The Handbook suggests that a PRO should have a watch suitable for timing starts, a hand-bearing compass, a wind stick, and a whistle on a lanyard. But it goes on to recommend a portable anemometer, a clipboard, paper and pencils, a pencil sharpener, a hand-held VHF radio with spare batteries, The Racing Rules of Sailing, a copy of the US SAILING Race Management Handbook, a cassette tape recorder with spare tape and batteries, a pair of binoculars, a course-angle calculator, electrical cable ties, some small stuff, zip-lock bags, a GPS receiver with spare batteries, a set of the signal flags needed for race management, some 2-foot PVC tubes to hold flagstaffs, private-channel radios with spare batteries, and a laptop computer with scoring, word processing and spreadsheet programs.

All this is in addition to foul weather gear, a PFD, a hat and hat retainer, sunscreen, and sunglasses.

The Handbook doesn’t include some things that I routinely take, like a water bottle, masking tape, electrical tape, scotch tape, white boards, dry-board markers and an eraser, an office stapler, paper clips, rubber bands, a cell phone, a pocket knife, a Leatherman all-purpose tool, poles for my signal flags (I use bamboo, because it’s cheap and it floats), a couple of carabiners, extra clipboards and pencils for members of the committee who don’t bring them, and a gaggle of forms that I download from the SAYRA Race Management page.

And it includes some things that I haven’t found necessary—ear plugs, a US SAILING Directory, and a copy of Appeals and Cases.

If you have a special piece of equipment you carry with you, something that isn’t listed above, let me know and I’ll add it to the list. Heck, I might just go off and get one for myself.