Reforming the Portsmouth Yardstick System

There's nothing wrong with personal handicaps but they are a seperate issue. what we do at our club which works quite well is apply the personal handicap to the weekly class race- so we have two sets of results from one race. If you have a race with results that are just personal handicaps the participation tends to go down. 

Originally posted by mongrel Originally posted by davidyacht Problem with formula based PY is it would not overcome the perceived difference in performance in different generations of one designs ... new Solo is built to the same rules, weight, measurements as a 20 year old Solo, but people keep saying that the latest Solos are noticeably faster than the old ones ... ho hum  The right formula could allow for that, factor in year built, material type, construction type into the formula?

Originally posted by Sam.Spoons A new sailor is unlikely to expect to win, I'm not sure how penalising him when he does get good enough to win is going to encourage him to sail more?

There are other achievements possible than simply fastest sailor, and a club may wish to give prizes for some of those. Improvement year on year for instance, or exceptional performance on the day. Various forms of personal handicap can let the club give prizes for such. Personal handicaps can also act as a visible measure of progress. I recall, for instance, the smile on a youngsters face when he was first ranked as faster than his father.

My logical mind always assumed initially that the yardstick, by virtue of it's name even, was a measure for performance you could expect from a given boat, which I still think should be a given and only varied if something physical actually changes to alter that performance.

Now two things actually contribute, the boat and the driver, you could go a whole lot further and like Golf courses apply whatever they do, say Par for a given wind condition, it's not beyond the wit and science of man, but there needs to be logic. Something to understand, other than the ravings of a 'secret bunch of agenda driven buffers in smoke filled rooms' as the quote goes.

It also needs to be adminstered by people with enthusiasm for it, the desire to make it better, more understandable, more welcome, more efficient, whatever, not just use it as a protection device for existing classes as it has been these many years.

Edited by iGRF - 09 Apr 21 at 11:00am

Originally posted by iGRF It also needs to be adminstered by people with enthusiasm for it, the desire to make it better, more understandable, more welcome, more efficient,

Edited by Sam.Spoons - 09 Apr 21 at 11:03am