Sailjuice Global Warm up handicaps

While we wait for the formal publication of the details of the Sailjuice Global Warm-up Series it may interest folks to hear about the revisions in handicaps which will be used as the forthcoming events. All the clubs involved have been meeting and sharing/analyzing data from the previous events and also from club race results and there is something like 95% agreement on the values to be used at the clubs. A few exceptions remain and clubs will use different values for these classes but these are only a small minority and it is hoped that the clubs can converge on these classes for 2013. With the postponement of the Draycote Dash, the Grafham Grand Prix which takes place on Monday 2 January will be the first event of the series.

Well thank god that it's not competing and enjoyment of the event that's paramount!

I'm trying to arrange for my nippers to go in their 4.7s, and I may actually get a race for a change by taking a club laser (see if Dad's still got it).

Laser handicaps are a big problem from the data I have. You need that sort of figure or even higher if front of fleet Lasers are going to be in with similar chance of winning compared to equal ability sailors in other classes, but at that sort of figure mid fleet Lasers are very advantaged compared to mid fleet sailors in other classes.

1118, for instance, would have brought 3 Lasers into the top 5 of my reservoir clubs biggest handicap series (60 boats and 16 Lasers entered), and 5 into the top 10, but only three of the 17 races would have been won by Lasers, the majority of wins going to RS200s, RS600s and Solos.

Normally we run Lasers on 1088, which is statistically well founded for the majority of our fleet, but doen't in my opinion leave the top of the fleet winning as many races as they ought. At 1088 Lasers one one race, with one boat in the top 5 and three in the top 10.

So the problem is that top Laser sailors are apparently unable to get as far in front of the maim body of their class as top sailors in every other fleet I've had enough data to analyse, both slower and faster, easier and more difficult to sail. This means its impossible to handicap both the mid and the front of the Laser fleet "fairly". You just have to try and achieve a balance I guess. On the data I have I don't regard this as a gift handicap for the front of fleet Laser sailors: I think it gives them a reasonably fair chance compared to top sailors from other classes, although doubtless events could prove me wrong.

Edited by JimC - 27 Nov 11 at 7:47am

i think that those handi caps are silly, one thing that has not been taken into account is the quality of the sailors in the classes. i know people are going to say the lasers have the best sailors in the world in them, which is right but at a uk club level certainly at our club they are far from to be polite. i think changing the handi cap system to make it fairer is rubbish i know at my club that they were looking at changing the handi caps and all it was going to do, was mean people that sail boats that arent normally raced by people that are that good at racing where going to start wining most of the handi cap races this was apparently to make it fair what would have been better is to organise some training and helms and crew swapping to get every one up to speed to improve the level in the club 

That laser Hcap looks great to me. A top sailor could perhaps do ok on that in 5 to 10 kts, but will still get cuffed outside that range. In some classes the disparity between the top sailors and the average(as implicit in py) is very different.
I completely agree with the approach that the best sailors should all finish at the same time in a pursuit race class windspeed specialities notwithstanding.
This obviously raises the spectre of which classes have the best sailors.
When are the rya py group going to use the last 20 year's advances in genetics to clone Nick Craig (possibly with some scaling) to finally close this problem off for once and for all.