GB Sailing Challenge - still confused

Originally posted by turnturtle Originally posted by H2 Originally posted by turnturtle  I don’t doubt that statistically accuracy can be validated as better now than then, however does that neccessarily translate to better quality of racing....  I read H2’s last post- great stuff and a good read.  But out of that prose, nothing relating to the change of calculation formula, or indeed the handicap itself, suggested this played any part whatsoever in his enjoyment of the day.... therefore could it not be better than those boats closest enough ‘in category’ were actually racing for line honours, rather than some retrospective calculation? I dunno ... but my point is that that would actually be a qualititive experiment to genuinely carry out before writing off the concept altogether as ‘unworkable’.   But hang on - if it was not for some form of Handicap system I would not have been out sailing against 100+ random people on Draycote. It was the handicap system that enabled me to turn up and take part, otherwise it was just a random days sailing on a lake in the midlands. However flawed the system is it enabled me to have a great days sailing! True - although the irony of it is that the handicap system bore (little to) no impact on said day; so in effect, all you were doing was a day out sailing with 100+ random people in the midlands whether you like to admit it or not.    That being the case, why not ditch the handicap system altogether and just arrange it like a festival of sailing in broadly aligned categories, free from this overly analytical BS that is supposedly the future of dinghy sailing?

Edited by H2 - 26 Nov 18 at 5:30pm

Originally posted by H2 Originally posted by mozzy Originally posted by H2 I actually learned more in 5 hours of that then months of winning at SCSC each weekend. What I'm getting at, is do you know what went wrong in the race you came 62nd? Where did you lose those twenty places? Or conversely where you gained them in the 42nd? Did you actually perform quite well in the 46th, making big gains on each leg, but just got a bad start or an unfortunate shift on the first beat? Can you correlate your performance with your result? Those tend to be things that decide how rewarding I find the racing. In handicap racing the nuances of that get lost in the noise of different boats strengths and weaknesses. I often just end up looking at boats in my class... which makes me think, I'd be happier racing against a handful of my own class at a small open or in club racing and have less obstacle to get around! If the new scoring, or data analysis could tell me more about how I was performing and where really I was doing well or not, then I might see more value in it.   Your results above, which system are they from?  Which score (GL or Dynamic) better reflected your performance and why?  Yes I know what went wrong - I had a duff start and had to make compromised decisions up the first beat and then was unable to claw back much on the next few legs. I was able to visit the website after and see this happen by following my GPS trace and my dynamic positions change over each race!

Originally posted by H2 Originally posted by Sam.Spoons Yup well said. The handicapping at Leigh & Lowton s well established and proven so I don't think there's much will to try something radical. We have 100 boats (as of week 3) entered our Open Winter series' across 5 fleets (Assy, Junior, Handicap, Laser and Solo) with 50+ on the water last Sunday. Sam - just out of interest does L&L use RYA, great lakes or some modified list for handicap racing? Reason I ask is that SCSC where I sail uses a modified RYA set of numbers and I was wondering how common this was?!

Edited by Sam.Spoons - 26 Nov 18 at 5:46pm

Originally posted by H2   Now if someone has a way of dynamically adjusting the handicap so that on light wind legs I get a boost and heavy wind legs I get a penalty

You mean a bit like: https://www.orc.org/index.asp?id=32

Again yacht racing has been there, done that and I'm not sure it was obviously superior to single number handicaps. I think the race/handicap committee had to decide on the wind speeds and angles of the legs which lead to all sorts of avenues of complaint!

Assuming an 'almost perfect' handicap system could be developed for dinghies it would probably go down the same road as yacht racing, with completely one off boats designed just to take advantage of the rules.

H2 - I don't think anyone is saying you can't have fun in a handicap race, but if you had a regular fleet of 20 H2s at your home club, would you actually bother to trail your boat to a big handicap  event?

There's maybe an optimum for having enough variety of boats to cater for different bodies and types of sailing. Dinghy sailing in the UK has long passed that point and seems so fragmented that PY is just a sticking plaster holding it together (while encouraging yet more fragmentation as SMOD manufacturers look for ways relieve a few more early adopters of a big chunk of cash...)   

Originally posted by DiscoBall Originally posted by H2   Now if someone has a way of dynamically adjusting the handicap so that on light wind legs I get a boost and heavy wind legs I get a penalty  You mean a bit like: https://www.orc.org/index.asp?id=32 Again yacht racing has been there, done that and I'm not sure it was obviously superior to single number handicaps. I think the race/handicap committee had to decide on the wind speeds and angles of the legs which lead to all sorts of avenues of complaint! Assuming an 'almost perfect' handicap system could be developed for dinghies it would probably go down the same road as yacht racing, with completely one off boats designed just to take advantage of the rules. H2 - I don't think anyone is saying you can't have fun in a handicap race, but if you had a regular fleet of 20 H2s at your home club, would you actually bother to trail your boat to a big handicap  event? There's maybe an optimum for having enough variety of boats to cater for different bodies and types of sailing. Dinghy sailing in the UK has long passed that point and seems so fragmented that PY is just a sticking plaster holding it together (while encouraging yet more fragmentation as SMOD manufacturers look for ways relieve a few more early adopters of a big chunk of cash...)