Need innovative ideas for racing

I am a member of a sailing club in Indiana with a small problem that I hope you can all chime in on. I'm a relative novice at racing coming to the activity at a fairly late age (50+).

• We race fairly small boats, sunfish, lasers, etc.... A mixed fleet and we handicap all the times. (I sail a sunfish and/or minifish).
• We aren't overlay competitive, but like to have fun and follow the rules as best we can.
• Our lake is really a dammed up river....so its not very wide (1/4 of a mile at its widest), but the basin we sail in is about one mile long.
• There is a pretty strong flow along the center of the lake (the historical river bed) towards the dam. Outside of the center area, it can get shallow (4'-6' deep).
• We do have a committee boat (pontoon) that we use to set the marks. We usually set them in the shallows otherwise the current will pick them up and move them (even with anchors).
• The lake can have a lot of motorboat traffic. We are allowed to race, but we have to set marks and retrieve them at the end of the race and can't place marks in the water on busy (holiday) weekends.

Here is our problem (challenge)........ Sometimes we can't (or don't want to) get the committee boat out to set the marks. Last summer, the lake was down about 2'-3' for part of the summer. Couldn't get the committee boat in (the upside was that none of the other motorboats could get in either!). Other times, just a couple of us (2 or 3) want to race, and it takes longer to set it up than actually race!

Do any of you ever race to (or around) some sort of theoretical mark? Last year we tried some things like racing to a line between two docks (one on the east and the other on the west shore) and back. Kind of like crossing a start line. We all agreed before the race to more or less use the "middle" of the line as a mark. Of course once we got out there, it was kind of hard to figure out which docks we were using!

If I could figure out how to get a drone to hover in the same place for two hours I'd try that!
Anyone got any ideas for a "temporary" but flexible mark that would be easy to use? We can't put anything permanent in the water...anything that floats will get pulled downstream fairly quickly.

Thanks

Mike

If there are docks on the river perhaps you could get the owner's permission to set flags on their dock. Then you could have instructions to come within 10 feet of the flag before turning to the next flag.

Think about setting some permanent marks. You could have a boat or two set the starting marks and then use the permanent marks as turning marks. Given the configuration of your lake that might work.

Good luck.

If you used anchors with long enough chain....I think anchors would work for your marks.

We wold like to, but the lake association does not allow us to leave permanent anchors in place. We have to set up and retrieve for each race. If we have a weekend series, we have to set up and knock down Saturday, then re-set up on Sunday.

Fisherman work in strong current all the time....they use long enough chain{called scope} they use line on the end. then pull up the anchor when ever....works a treat

How many marks would you need? Why not anchor the Committee boat to become both the start/finish line, plus a "middle mark"? You could also provide a camera station for a youngster in another boat—used as a marker. Or give a youngster (or oldster) $5 to go fishing in still another "mark".

Do youngsters still consider $5 "money"?

Could you set a short course and use like bright orange Tide bottles or something as marks? You would still need line and anchor to hold them in place but I would think you could fit one or two in the cockpit and sail to set them. Would still take time but you wouldn't need the cmt boat.

These may be too small as a marker, but they're relatively inexpensive. Fishermen use these to show the extent of "structure" following a scan of their fish-finders. They come with their own anchor, but a more substantial anchor could be added.