The VSK Australia Story

Graphic Designer Paul Le Fevre launched VSK-Australia in May 2005, with three main goals in mind. First, to create a club that organised structured and high quality virtual racing predominantly for Australians, but also open to any international skipper wishing to bridge the time-zones. Secondly, to create an environment where people feel welcome, can make friends and learn the finer points of virtual sailing and the rules of sailing; and thirdly, to become the premiere VSK Club, not from having the fastest skippers but from having the best sailing program, being the most helpful to new skippers and using an "inclusive" membership policy rather than an "exclusive" one.

Three years down the track from the launch, Paul was asked if the club had lived up to these expectations. “The VSK AUS community has impressed me tremendously and continues to do so on a regular basis,” he said. “There's no doubt that the status our club enjoys in the international Virtual Sailing community comes down to the people in it and what they.” Membership numbers also reflect this – the club boasts almost 5500 registered users (@ end August 2008), with almost 600 full club members from all over the world, and ranging from 7 years old to 76!

VSK-AUS Racing

Part of the community spirit also extends to the race committee. Despite starting with a bang, the racing numbers soon dropped off due to the lack of a race calendar. Several members with some knowledge of race organisation put their hands up and just started organising things. Since then, the committee has expanded to cope with running a Wednesday night pointscore series (new series each month), a variety of two or three week regattas on Monday nights, Team Racing on Thursday nights, an alternate pointscore series on Friday, and Sunday nights where the winner picks the next week's racing.

Part of the RaceComm’s approach has been to mirror real-life events where possible, with regards to timing, class of boat and location. All of the events are run as close as possible to a real event – notices of races and sailing instructions are posted, registration of entry are made by the skippers, results are collected and scored using low points. Late in 2007, we ran State Titles followed by a hugely successful Admiral’s Cup over 2 months with Australian teams based on state of origin and even teams from New Zealand, one of which took first place. There are also two major “internal” regattas held each year, being the Australian Championships in February and the Anniversary Plate in August. Both of these events have had sponsorship through businesses associated with club members, and included real trophies being posted to the place getters!

A real feather in the Club’s hat was the organising and hosting the World Team Racing Championship in 2007, the Club’s first truly international event. This involved coordinating several weeks of round-robin competition followed by a knock-out series to determine the winner. What makes this competition so interesting is that you get to race teams from all over the world and in the process of doing so, you make new friends from just about everywhere.

Sharing the Knowledge

One of the key goals is encouraging the members to share their knowledge. VSK-AUS has become recognised as a great source of information on using the game (changing graphics and network settings), game play (tips and tricks on how to get the best performance out of the various boats) and also for advice on the Racing Rules of Sailing.

One of the great features of VSK is the ability to save a replay of any race and review it from any angle you like. This feature is used to great effect when reviewing penalty or protest situations. We often discuss penalties handed out by the VSK Umpire after a race by using the replays which can be posted in our forum or downloads area, or emailed to other members. Short video clips or screenshots are then produced and published at the site along with an explanation of the rules involved. Many club members agree that the review of the penalties that they don’t understand is great for improving rule knowledge and tactics.

Skins Studio

One recent and significant development at the Club has been the introduction of a Skins Studio, where members can field requests from the VSK global community and create custom paint jobs (skins) for the game’s models. This is a first for any of the online VSK clubs, and formalises a previously ad-hoc approach. The concept has been promoted across other VSK websites and has seen many new visitors to the site. People wanting a skin post up a request, then one of the Skin Gurus will take on the project and work with the customer up until completion.