Essex Stragglers Orienteering Society (SOS)

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Stragglers' Relays
Danbury Outdoor Centre and Lakes
Sunday 1st July 2007
Provisional Results

Officials' Comments

Organiser - Nancy Powell Davies powell.davies@btinternet.com

What I was most pleased to see today was the number of families enjoying the event, despite the variable weather. That to me is what the Stragglers Relays is all about and I am only sorry that I have never yet been able to gather a PD team together. What I do notice, though, is that SOS members group themselves in an ad-hoc sort of way whereas other clubs organise themselves into winning teams. Perhaps next year we will make up a Super SOS team to win back the trophy.

Congratulations to the winning team, ‘Eclectic WAOC’ of Caroline and Edward Louth, Nicola Gardner and Bruce Marshall. Commiserations to WAOC Chaos who actually finished first but were disqualified for a mispunch. This made us actually check all the cards and we found a disappointingly high number of mistakes which has led to one third of the teams being disqualified. The mistakes were all different so it could only be the runners’ fault.

I hope that the re-arrangements required to accommodate the archery group that arrived (despite our being assured that the facility had not been booked for today) didn’t cause too many problems.

Thanks to Danbury Outdoor Centre for making us welcome; to Richard Barker who turned up early and helped set things up; to James Lyne for planning some superb courses and helping to set things up and in the tent; to Mark Lyne and Steve Cartwright for helping me so much on the day (as well as controlling on Steve’s part) and Jeff PD for giving up his weekend to help me.

And thank you to everyone who participated.

Planner - James Lyne

When the time came around for planning this event, I was well underway with revision for my A-levels and so was feeling pressure from the timings. This was made doubly difficult by only having a 1:10000 map from over ten years ago to help me plan preliminary courses on! Kevin did an excellent job on the new map for which I thank him and when I got hold of it, planning became a lot easier.

The issue of the archery was always there, however, Nancy had been told that there were no bookings so when I planned, I was doing so under the impression there would be no danger. My apologies go out to anyone confused by the last minute changes on the day.

The limited opportunities for crossing points also made things harder, however, not too many teams were confused by crossing back over the same point on the orange and yellow courses.

Many thanks to Steve, Nancy, Jeff, Kevin and my dad for the help they gave me and the excellent event organised by Nancy.

Controller - Stephen Cartwright

It was nice to be involved in a friendly informal event that people seemed to enjoy.

As I understand it my prime duties with regard to the relays were to ensure thay were safe and fair. It was kind of the Outdoor Centre and the Country Park not to impose any restrictions on us in terms out-of-bounds areas regarding flora and fauna. The Country Park simply asked us to respect higher fences, and preferably smaller ones too. The main worry was of course the size of the archers bows and the distance the arrows could travel, especially perhaps in unskilled hands. I apologise if the last minute notice trying to keep people away from the area wasn't quite big enough yet guess I should stress the importance of respecting out-of-bounds areas and fences for reasons of personal safety and orienteerings reputation.

James is to be commended for helping in my difficulties with OCAD9 by providing things on paper. Unfortunately OCAD9 doesn't seem to sit well with my computer, locks up on occasions, and creates enormous print files that cannot be used.

I hope that the courses were flat enough not to worry that a height climb wasn't quoted on the control descriptions.

Webmaster - Andrew Cordle andrew@cordle.net

I've started a Roll of Honour of past Stragglers' Relays winners (here) - thanks to Tim Pribul for much of the information. If you could help fill in the blanks, please contact me.

Preliminary Results

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