Rise Of The Ok etc

If I've just been overtaken by a Topper while leaning over the back of the boat trying to remove the octopus from around my rudder, there is no chance in hell of winning (or doing well) in the handicap race, whatever the system (except possibly in an eps off 1060).
It is certainly a competitive sport, but behind that there has to be a love of the act itself, or else you end up like all those squad kids who give up when they realize they aren't going to be the next Ben A or Hannah Mills. Both of whom, it is well documented grew up loving both the sailing and the winning.

As for the boat, not dork (as you so delightfully put it) handicap, separating the 2 in every set of weather conditions we get is, as far as I can see, impossible. The variations in design are too small to pick up on measurment systems (and what is fast in a blow may well be slow in a drift, so how do you measure?).

The variations of weather, helm good/bad days and the time needed to test all the variations of boats there are out there make the idea of giving the boats to industry pros to race around and get "top end" handicaps. And after how many years would they get round to testing the EPS, Lightning and Minisail? They'd have to spend several years comparing Solos to Streakers to Lasers in their various forms and then the Zero and 3 Aeros would jump the queue, and even then you'd have a very small pool of results. And a broke PYAG when they have to pay the pro sailors to do it.

Yes, some classes seem to suffer. The OKs seem to, and the British Moths. I think both classes have ended up sailing at a few clubs, suited to the boat where there are reasonably large groups that still do the handicap racing. The large groups tend to push each other and so improve the average, and the locations are good for the boats. Therefore, the results that go back in are nearer the boat's potential than the results for more thinly spread boats.

Presumably, the classes are still doing OK at their core clubs at that handicap, or it would drop. The problem comes for someone racing the boat elsewhere, without those years of knowhow and competition within a fleet. Doesn't take much to lose 20 or 30 points on the potential at that point.

And no, I don't have a better answer.

When I said "It really is a pity that it is not possible to extract data from the returns such that the PN would reflect the potential of the boat rather than the average sailor's performance", I was hoping somebody would contradict me and say it is possible by cunning use of statistics.

Jim, Jim, where art thou, Jim?

Originally posted by kneewrecker it is possible- that's exactly what the GL scheme does.

Not for the Laser 3000 it doesn't - 1007 last time I looked! Clearly they took the class-recommended no. for the V3k, but they have been told the situation.

Doesn't give me much faith in the rest of the numbers.

KW - perhaps you can explain how the GL system does that exactly.  Having looked at the technical details of both the PY and GL scheme in some detail and been involved with both at the periphery I can see very very little technical difference between the two schemes which is why if you run the PYS algorithm on the data from clubs data that make up the GL you get very similar results as they do  - as you would expect.  The biggest differences are that the GL deal with one type of water (nothing to stop the open sea or little puddle guys taking the same approach) and the club representatives who are very experienced looking at PN statistics take a specific view on those bimodal boats with very different performance in light and breezy.  The PY algorithm actually does some of this automatically with the exclusions scheme (in both algorithms) - but the GL folks take this a bit further and I think that is right for the sailjuice series.  For most classes it doesn't apply.

When I run the standard PYS algorithm on my clubs data (open water estuary) we get very very similar results to the GL system - as I would expect.

MM - You can take into account potential if you can identify individual boats - and particularly if we can get a coarse skill factor rating added to each data point.  The problem is that this is hard to do for most clubs when submitting data - but I hope it is something the PYS can accommodate in the future.  For local club analysis it is pretty easy to do and we do it for our own local handicap adjustments.  Essentially you divide the performances into deciles and then compare the relative performance of the higher performing deciles.  It turns out that the highest performing decile has (surprisingly to me) more variation than the 2nd and 3rd, so we use the combined 2nd and 3rd decile to do the calculation.  Remember it doesn't matter which deciles you use as long as you compare the same deciles for all classes and use the ones towards the upper end (i.e. the most competent (and generally more consistent) sailors).

Mark




Edited by marke - 07 Oct 14 at 10:37am

Originally posted by marke KW - perhaps you can explain how the GL system does that exactly.