Safety Cover - Cowes Torquay Cowes 2022

[Matt]

I had an interesting conversation with a disgruntled BPRC official at the weekend regarding safety cover on the powerboat racing.

Safety Officer is the hardest job of all at a race weekend. If all goes well, it's an obscure role that nobody notices or thanks, but if anything safety related goes wrong, that person's neck is on the chopping block. There's very few people in the country I would trust as Safety Officer for a race as big as the CTC, but Danielle Strawford is one of the ones whose judgement you can trust.

As part of planning the event, a request was made for a number of paramedics to be out on the course. This is not just for competitor safety, but also for spectator safety too - once out of the start blocks, you never know when some yacht is going to tack in front of a race boat. Just see my thread about a yacht tacking in front of the St Clare yesterday! Now, the racers all know the colregs and always have a very close eye out - but this doesn't negate the need to include safety cover - ie plan for the worst, hope for the best. Make sure all risk mitigations are layered in case one or more of them are not sufficient. This is a classic thing you see in the air accident investigations - it was always a chain of events that causes an accident. The trick is therefore to put as many break points as you can in the chain to avoid and/or deescalate the accident.

Anyway, the BPRC official I was talking to said that the initial request for safety cover was denied, citing budgetary concerns.
This is on a race that costs circa 5K to put on, but returned 18K in race entry fees. And consider if you will that some of the boats will have been putting several thousands of pounds of fuel in - each.

The conversation apparently progressed with the suggestion that perhaps the organisers would be better placed to not fund flying in a well known powerboat celebrity and instead use those funds for a paramedic. It was decided that this was not possible - so over a couple of hundred quid to add an extra paramedic, the funds were not made available. This put the safety officer in an untenable position and she was forced to step away from the role.

Anyhow, with about a week to go, a replacement safety officer was found, but clearly at such short notice didn't have time to fully plan or organise safety cover - creating an increased burden on the race officer and other people running the day, which any of you that were there will have noticed when both the lifeboat and the cowes harbour master were called upon to assist marshalling the spectators.

So not only has one of the few credible safety officers in the sport been alienated, the race ran without the level of safety cover that was advised.

I even heard someone say that they didn't think safety cover should be provided at all and it was only there for the class 3 boats. Only 1 more serious or fatal accident needs to happen and not only will the event be canned, the sport becomes uninsurable. So you better make damn sure you have the maximum safety cover, not the minimum.

All over 250 quid.

[Voodoo]

Originally Posted by Matt

Safety Officer is the hardest job of all at a race weekend. If all goes well, it's an obscure role that nobody notices or thanks, but if anything safety related goes wrong, that person's neck is on the chopping block. There's very few people in the country I would trust as Safety Officer for a race as big as the CTC, but Danielle Strawford is one of the ones whose judgement you can trust.

100% right....it is the hardest job. Danielle was racing with her dad in a rib, and then in V24 when I was racing in 3C and moving into the Safety Officers role she would have taken a ton of knowledge and experience with her. Sad that she felt she had to step down from CTC but her decision was the right one given what happened.

[treerat]

An interesting view and one that the only element I can comment on - is the activity and cover at Torquay, which I was once again part of.

We had a number of marshal boats in each spectator area, turn mark and risk point. We also had a paramedic afloat within the lead marshal boat, the plan being that should they be required we also had First Responders on the team that would assist or cover the area until the paramedic was free.

I've no idea if this was a centrally planned tasking or if it was the local lead, pulling in their contacts, but at Torquay - we were well covered with both marshal boats and medically.

[Matt]

Yes. The OOD had to argue quite forcefully to have the ones that were there, afloat at all.

[Voodoo]

We couldn't get our usual berth at Island Harbour this year so we had a weekend in Torquay instead to check out that end of the race and just to be away really. There looked to be good safety coverage down there with the harbour turn mark well policed etc...a number of boats also went out to (I would imagine) the Ore Stone Rock to monitor that turn as well. All looked very calm and organised...

[Matt]

Originally Posted by treerat

An interesting view and one that the only element I can comment on - is the activity and cover at Torquay, which I was once again part of.

We had a number of marshal boats in each spectator area, turn mark and risk point. We also had a paramedic afloat within the lead marshal boat, the plan being that should they be required we also had First Responders on the team that would assist or cover the area until the paramedic was free.

I've no idea if this was a centrally planned tasking or if it was the local lead, pulling in their contacts, but at Torquay - we were well covered with both marshal boats and medically.

I was just reflecting on this a little further and think it would be fair to say the OOD did a good job on the day with the tools he had, nobody crashed (OK, Unipart blew the tunnel out, sank, and didn't make it out of the solent) and all went well.

....the point was.....250 quid for one more paramedic....Denied.....Flight from Spain for "powerboat celebrity"...approved.......

If the safety officer says "this is what we need", the only 2 correct answers are "Approved" or "Are you sure that's enough".

[treerat]

Originally Posted by Matt

If the safety officer says "this is what we need", the only 2 correct answers are "Approved" or "Are you sure that's enough".

having been a safety officer for world, Olympic and international events - can't agree more.

To the point where I've threatened to pull whole teams if the requests were denied.

At 1 of the UK Ironman events the race director decided to over rule, the words of advise he received were 'you do that, you'll have no safety team in place'. He looked, thought about challenging and thought better!!

Its a nasty job, but when done well, and supported properly - an enjoyable one - but you need big shoulders.