Sailwave allows a start to be marked as DiscardMeFirst. Using this capability, practice races can be included in the series because you can force them to be discarded before discarding real races.

You’ll need to add the number of practice races to the number of discards specified in the sailing instructions.

For example consider a 5 race series where the discard profile implied by the SIs is:-

0,0,1,1,2

If you start the event with 2 extra practice races (7 races in total), you would change the discard profile to be:-

0,0,2,2,3,3,4

This allows competitors to see how they’re doing after the practice races and then as soon as the practice races have been sailed they are both discarded.

You can optionally rename the two practice races to be P1 and P2 for example.

By including the practice races in the series in this way, you can always change the discard profile to include the practice races if too few of the event races are sailed to constitute a series.