A guide to club racing - part 2 (The Start)

Published 15:36 on 5 Jun 2026

Hi and welcome to our next article in "A guide to club racing". 

Part 2 covers the start sequence and whilst it sounds a bit daunting, once you have experienced it a few times it becomes second nature. I can guarantee in the early stages you will get it mixed up but that's Ok because club racing is supposed to be fun so no one will actually notice..... and actually sometimes (on the odd occasion), the Race Officer gets it wrong then we all have a giggle...

So the start sequence is controlled by a set sequence of flags and horns and for this article we are going to focus on club racing which is run from the bridge on top of the RIB store. Up on the balcony you will see a flag pole with a tall mast which carries either an Orange or a Blue Flag and then 3 poles either side to carry a maximum of 6 other flags. 

So what are the flags you should expect to see first of all? To give you some background, the flags all are allocated a letter or number and you can trace the history of this back to signalling on ships, so for example the letter P (Papa) is a Blue rectangle with a smaller white triangle in the middle, whilst the number 8 is a white elongated pennant with a red cross across it. We then adopt certain flags for certain purposes

Flag	Name	Useage
	No 2	Class Flag
	P - Papa	Preparatory
		Start line / sequence
		Finish line / sequence

The start follows a simple sequence of flags going up and down and horns being sounded. 

The most important thing to remember is that the actual timing comes from the FLAG going up or down NOT the horn being sounded. The horn is only there to draw your attention to the flag......

Time	Direction	Flag	Look Like		Horn
Approx start minus 5 mins	Up	Orange
Start minus 3 mins	Up	Class			1 short
Start minus 2 mins	Up	Preparatory			1 Short
Start minus 1 mins	Down	Preparatory			1 Short
Start..... Go	Down	Class			1 Short

So hopefully it all goes OK and on the class flag going down you nail the start and go over the line (see the next article for what is actually the start line depending on the course board...). But sometimes people go over the line early and the Race Officer has to "recall" boats. For our club the penalty you have to take if you are  single recalled, is to sail back over the start line, once you have crossed back you are free to go back over to start. You do not have to sail around the end of the start line or do a full turn, all you have to do it dip over then dip back.

So how are recalls signaled? Well, there are 2 types of recall

A single recall is signaled if one "or a small handful" of boats go over early and this must be done within 3 seconds of the final "go". 

In this case the X or "X-ray" flag denoted as follows is hoisted and a single long horn is sounded. The race Officer will not instruct the boats that went over early, it is up to the competitor to judge if they were the individual or part of the small group.

A general recall is signaled if a larger group of boats go over early and it is more effective to restart the race by recalling ALL boats. At this point the race start is aborted and the sequence start sequence will be restarted once all boats are back over the line.

In this case the "First substitute flag" denoted as follows is hoisted and a double long horn is sounded.

Now Bala, being Bala, sometimes the weather is not in our favour, and a declared times start (such as our 11:00 Pursuit) gets delayed due to some reason or another. The good news is (as you would expect), is that we have a flag for that as well. We have one type of signal to indicated a "postponement" or delay in the start and another for a abandoned race (so get yourselves to shore.....).

For a postponement in the start you will see the "code" flag flying which looks like this BUT if the race in abandoned, you will see the N "November" flag being flown on top of the A "Alpha flag as follows

So thats the starting sequence and other things pertaining to it. I hope that has helped everyone. In the next part we will look at the course board notation and also what that means for the start and finish lines. We will also touch on how shortened course are flagged up and why we do it.

You can go back to the previous article which covers our general racing structure and some basic terminology here.

Last updated 11:51 on 8 June 2026