RC: argh (con't)

The RC this year is staff challenged. Dragon Lady the mark boat isn't getting crewed on Wednesday night. A windward leeward course is difficult to set up. It is no time for the RC to have fun by playing god. The committee set the start at "o" and the windward mark was Dufferin; the bearing to the windward mark was almost due north. After checking the wind I stared at the RC with the thought: "What are you doing?". The wind was from the northwest. The line was very pin favoured. Port tack would be on the windward mark's layline. We had a very good start; at the pin and on port tack (!, I feel that being on port tack at the start is a very noob thing to do). I was very aggressive with my maneuvers as I wanted to put in a good show. Another J, who was known to be a 'regatta' boat, had come out to race. I wanted to put in a credible performance. Shortly after the start boats began to head back. I asked Charles to hail the committee boat to find out if we were over early. I was confused still by what Charles was saying, so I hailed the RC. Once I heard the PRO say general recall I headed back but was still confused. Why? It ended up that not only was the line badly skewed with the pin being favoured, not only was it a port tack start, which of course requires extra boat handling skills not necessarily present in a club race, but the RC decided to have "fun" by putting in a five minute delay in the 2nd and third start. Needless to say our second start was very bad and given that you were on the port tack layline to the mark the start was it; and we were screwed The crew handled things very well we were able to catch up to JR and Slippery but not pass them. Windlight got another first. By putting in the 5 minute delay for the third start the RC added complications to what was going to be an unfair race course. It was an unnecessary affirmation of the principle that for a race the PRO is god.