Are you Gold or are you Silver?

At this weekend's Inland Championships at Northampton we'll have a means of identifying who's in the Gold Fleet and who's in the Silver Fleet. It goes like this . . . 

Sailors will be assigned to either 'Gold' or 'Silver' fleet on the basis of their performance in previous years. A sailor who has achieved an overall result in the top third of the fleet in one or more Nationals or Inlands over the previous 3 years will be assigned to the 'Gold' fleet. All other sailors who have been to Nationals or Inlands over the previous 3 years will be assigned to the 'Silver' fleet. Any sailor who has not been to a Nationals or Inlands over the previous 3 years will be allocated to a fleet at the discretion of the Class Association committee. This will take into account previous performance in other classes for those new to the fleet, and occasionally previous open meeting results for regular Streaker sailors who have not recently attended a Nationals or Inlands.

A list of Gold fleet sailors will be available at Northampton and this means everyone else will be Silver fleet and it will be straightforward to identify the top Silver fleet sailors in the overall results. 

To be clear, this doesn't mean Gold and Silver fleet sailors race separately. Everyone races together but it means that Silver fleet sailors will be able to identify who they're racing against for the Silver fleet prizes.

If a Silver Fleet sailor comes in the top third of the results at Northampton, then they'll be Gold at the Nationals.