Autumn Muster - From the Race Secretary

The Autumn Muster is on 6th-7th September 2014.  As in previous years this involves, for those who want to race, a race to Rothesay from Kip, ideally by way of the Cumbrae.  The harbourmaster in Rothesay is always welcoming and space has been reserved.  Seamus our Commodore has arranged dinner in the Victoria Hotel which if nothing else has the obvious advantage that no bus is required.  And of course there is the Pursuit Race back to Kip on the Sunday.
Hopefully the entry form will be emailed out in a newsletter soon but in the meantime the entry form and instructions can be downloaded here  .as a Word document. 
Furthermore there is an additional download available - this is an Excel results spreadsheet which was originally devised by Tom Hutchison. In the downloadable form it is ready populated with the usual Serpent suspects complete with handicaps and only requires the OOD to fill in the elapsed time to the finish for each boat. It is very easy to use for anyone familiar at the most basic level with Excel and if interested you are invited to download it and have a play. Excel calculates the results to decimals of minutes but since Serpent racing is so close (!) and everyone wants to know their time differences in actual seconds, the third last column has been added and that is where you enter the decimals of the minute - For example say the corrected time in minutes is 55.47. You would enter the .47 in the 3rd last column (headed 'decimal seconds') and in the second last column this will automatically appear as actual seconds. You then enter the final time in the last column by putting in the whole minutes from the corrected time column and inserting the whole seconds that you have just had calculated.  Much simpler to do than it is to describe but email me if you have any questions about it. I have found that the spreadsheet works fine on an ipad running Quickoffice and thus is usefully portable for on board use. My thanks to Tom for making it available.

It would be nice to get some more pictures on the website so please email your best cruising photos to serpentyachtclub@googlemail.com  and we can have a little gallery - perhaps with some commentary if you provide that too.  Ideally it is best if you don't email full camera resolution shots at 8Mb a pop or whatever. For those au fait with these things a .JPEG image (not RAW!) 1920x1080 pixels is more than plenty fine but this is by no means critical.