BOC\'s first Sunday event of the reopening will be at Kilcoran Moorland, County Tipperary on Sunday July 5th. Details are as follows

START TIMES
10:30am - 1pm

PARKING
Parking will be at the side of the old Cork-Dublin road about 1km on the Cork side of Kilcoran lodge.

START
Access to the moorland will be via a gate to the field which is closest to the woods.
The gate will be slightly opened with a low stile to prevent sheep exiting.
The start will be about 200m (40m climb) from the gate.
Maps will be rolled and a loose description rolled with each.
If the weather is not dry, the maps will be bagged and the loose descriptions will be in the bag.
Competitors will pick up their map before punching the start and can take some time to get organised with the loose descritpions.
There will be a separate queue for each course and the map boxes will be separated significantly.
The start SI box will be shared so only one competitor/family group must approach it at a time.

REGISTRATION
Registration will be either at the gate or at the start depending on outcome of inspection (can\'t visit County Tipperary until Monday)
All competitors will be required to supply a contact phone number at time of registration according to COVID-19 guidelines.
Competitors will call out names, course and contact number from outside a tapped off area.
Rental SI cards will be available for a competitor to pick up themselves.
There will be no passing of anything to/from registration personel.

DOWNLOAD
The download will be at registration

PAYMENT
The IOA online payment system is not quite ready for roll-out so please BRING EXACT CHANGE and place payment in the box at registration
adult €8
child €4
student €5
family €15
SI-card rental €1

COURSES
Brown   9.9km   400m   20c    1:15000
Blue      7.3km   265m   13c    1:10000
Green   5.5km   205m    11c    1:10000
Red       4.5km  150m    10c    1:7500
Orange  3.2km  115m     8c     1:7500
All courses will be in the open moorland so there will be no difficulty with social distancing.
The map has been updated to ISOM2017-2

CONTROLS
All courses including Orange will be SI only (Rental SI cards will be available). There will be no punches on the controls
Please step a few metres away from controls immediately after punching to keep out of other competitors way.
Please do not touch the SI boxes as another competitor may have touched it previously.
Supervisory adults in families should take special card with young children and consider keeping the SI card themselves

STILES
There are a number of stiles which were previously placed to cross wire fences at various points.
Use of these is not compulsory but is recommended.
Please do not grab the support poles but rather lean against them using one\'s arm if support is required.

PLANNER Liam Cotter
CONTROLER Tony Cotter

Thanks to the Cotter family for great event today Good courses and map and very well organised with respect to HSE guidelines including Tony\'s patent \"key bag\"

Thanks to all those who attended Kilcoran on Sunday.
The following organisers report may be helpful at other events.

Social distancing was easily facilitated by using an area with almost unlimited space.
An area around registration was taped off to enforce physical distancing and the download box was mounted on a cane within the taped-off area but close enough to stretch out and reach it.
This extra stretch of the arm provided the extra 0.5m because the download box cable was only about 1.5m in length.
The rental SIs were hung individually with screws on the sides of a 40mm diameter pipe which was driven into the ground like a post to keep vertical. This was placed at the competitor side of registration.
A cash box was placed at the competitor side of registration.
A second pipe with screws on the side was used for competitors to hang their car keys. This was placed in front of registration and was considered safe due to the remote location but it would not work in a busier event with many unknown competitors and would not be ideal if the day was wet. A better solution is needed next time to keep keys safe and dry.
Each competitor called out their deatils at registration and these were entered directly on the laptop so no pieces of paper were passed.
The organisers only had to take precaution by using hand-sanitiser before tasks like handling rolled up maps or placing additional rental SI cards on the stand.

Each map and loose control descriptions were placed in a plastic bag (a few days previously), rolled up and placed into a short pipe in an array of 4 x 4 short pipes (100mm length of 50mm white domestic waste pipe) for each course. This ensured that each competitor could easily take a map without touching any other map and also the maps did not blow away in the wind. The maps for each course were spread out with a potential queue at each but this was not necessary because competitors started immediately after registering so all of the maps could have been placed close together if space was scarce.
A competitor picked up their rolled up map and organised their loose descriptions before punching the start. Competitors allowed whatever time they desired relative to the previous person to start on that course (if they saw them start).

Social-distancing among organisers was not necessary because all belonged to the same household.
This meant that kites, canes and SI boxes could be put out and collected without needing to disinfect them.
This would pose a risk for the organisers if competitors happened to touch them but we considered that risk to be low at this event because the area chosen was far from Cork city and only the more experienced orienteers travelled as expected.
We would not take this risk with a large number of families with small children so the plan is to not use SI for the Yellow and Orange courses when we are closer to the city (as was always the case).
Disinfecting/cleaning the SI boxes and canes would have been extremely difficult when collecting them because there were gale-force winds at the top of the hill and at one stage there was a shower resulting in the wind-driven rain being accelerated so much that it felt like hail. It may be easy to put a disinfecting protocol in place for a calm sunny day but not all days are like that.

As usual, not everything went to plan so it is important to point out what went wrong so that precautions can be taken the next time
1. We pre-printed just 10 of each map with the plan of printing exatr maps at the event but comething went wrong with the connection between the laptop and printer. We ended up short a few Blue maps and had to take them out of the plastic bag when another competitor finished and place them in new bags. This was not a perfect solution because the first competitor may have touched the map while getting the loose description out of the bag. Reusing maps could be safe in emergency situations if the competitor never needed to open the bag. That would mean dispensing loose descriptions by other means.
2. We put a hammer into the cash box to hold it down but we spotted a competitor lifting it to place a bank note under it so we removed the hammer.
3. The first competitor to use a Rental SI did not notice the box for returned rentals because it was empty and so placed the rental SI back on the pole with the other SIs. This was reused by another competitor shortly after (Need to keep the rental SIs further away from download and the SI return box needs to be labelled clearly).

BOC\'s normal registration procedure used to be that registration did the following tasks - took competitors details on an A4 page, gave out maps, loose descriptions and control cards for Yellow/Orange courses, handled payment, gave start time and finish times for Yellow/Orange courses, entered SI competitors on the laptop and ticked off competitors as they finished.
At this event, it was only necessary to enter competitors details on the laptop so there was much less to do at registration. It was not necessary to have a person at the start either so it was easy for a single person to manage (although additional help was at hand until they went for a run themselves). Therefore COVID-19 results in a lot of extra preparatory work for the first event but does not require extra manpower on the day. The best social-distanceing is to have most aspects as self-service so that fewer organisers are involved. The pre-entry system would help when ready for subsequent events but we anticipate that 100% pre-entry would be a major deterrant to beginners so a blended approach may be best.