In the rewrite of the National Officiating Program as it relates to Race Officer training and accreditation, the Club level RO training and accreditation was an anomaly.

While the accreditation was entitled Race Officer, in the great majority of cases the person holding that accreditation was not a person in charge of a race or a race course. Those people were performing visual signals, sound signals, time keeping, recording, mark laying, record keeping, scoring and handicapping tasks - all vital roles in themselves but not performing the generally accepted role of an RO. The person in charge of a course or a race.

Further, once the Club RO training moved to a webinar format, presenters became concerned that AS was anointing participants in the webinars as ROs with no way of knowing if, beyond logging into the webinar, the participants had learned or understood anything, or in fact had been in the webinar in its entirety.

Having recognised this, the decision was then taken to move away from three domestic and one international level of RO to two domestic and one international, but also to provide useful and practical training and accreditation for those volunteers who have been and were still filling the roles mentioned above.

The new Canopi course and accreditation for Committee Boat/Finish Boat personnel and the redeveloped Mark Layer course and accreditation provide highly detailed training, done online and at their own pace - and at no cost - and are relevant to the jobs these valued volunteers do on race day. Crucially, these courses contain quizzes and tests to ensure that participants understand and absorb what they are seeing and reading.

The individual roles are explained in much greater detail than was previously possible in the CRO seminar/webinar. Feedback on the quality of these courses has been positive with some high level users, RO course presenters, providing suggestions for improvements.

The Scorer/Handicapper modules remain under development and it is hoped that this course will be available soon.

The small percentage of Club ROs who do take charge of a race course have not been forgotten. Several have already started the process of accrediting through the normal progression, attending RRO/NRO seminars in recent weeks. Others with more extensive CVs are accessing the RPL option in the NOP.

The working group charged with redeveloping the NOP believe that the sport will have a stronger volunteer group as a result of these changes, and there will be more integrity in the qualifications held and used by those volunteers.

For Race Officials’ resources, click here.
E-Learning courses are available here.
Information about transitioning from Club RO to Regional or National RO is here. *

By Nick Hutton, IRO and Race Officials Committee

* Australian Sailing is extending the transition period by 18 months to 30 June 2025. Communications specific to that will be sent to interested race officials and the website updated shortly.