PN list 2013

Originally posted by Medway Maniac As soon as you start to fiddle, people start to get the feeling that PN's are arbitrary and results are dubious and maybe not worth sailing for; they then vote with their feet.

Originally posted by Medway Maniac Originally posted by transient   ..........Personal experience? Well, ever since we started to set local PY's - albeit only for boats like the V3k and Alto that don't have one - it seems to have opened a can of worms, and now it is routine to hear people explaining results merely as symptomatic of the vagaries of the system.  When given the option of expanding use of the figures provided by the RYA/Sailracer site to all classes at a members' meeting, there was a unanimous rejection of the idea; I guess everyone was worried they would get a worse number or their main rival would get a better one. In the old days people just used to moan that the Phantom PY was too high (while grudgingly accepting that the local Phant sailors 'weren't bad'), but they could live with just having one whipping boy, mentally deleting just the Phant result. Edit: and yes, our turnouts have gone down in the handicap fleets over a few years since then, although I'd put the weather as a more major influence last year!

For sure, Moomin, you could complain if you were being beaten on PY by guys who you knew you could beat if you were also sailing a Phantom.

The problem is I'll never know if I could beat them if I was also sailing a Phantom - I can be fairly certain I wouldn't be competitive in a Phantom, given I sail a Europe and an N12 I'll let you guess why!  OK Wednesday evening drifts I might give them a run but over the course of a full series, unlikely.

Originally posted by moomin .....d and we rely on sensible interpretation of the data to accommodate skill factor as best as possible.

Where s the sensible interpretation going to happen?
The numbers get stuffed into a spreadsheet, people follow the instructions without understanding the process numerically.

You can see where this is going, we are headed toward a half baked personal handicap system.
Is that what people want?

You only have to look at the yacht system to see where we are being herded.

RYA policy is only class racing can be taken seriously.

Personally, I'm not much motivated by winning, I enjoy a good race on the water and 99% of the time would rather have a close tactical race and come a close second than beat someone by miles.
But it's useful to know whether I'm sailing a different boat to a similar level as the 400.
Other people I know seem to need the recognition of the results, it is a serious business to them.
The thing is, I need those people to race against and to give our club critical mass.

Our club does dabble in personal handicaps for one series, it's OK for a bit of fun once a year, and it's good to give improvers some recognition but some people are clearly not happy.