The Tasar v the Icon

Burghfield SC had a very successful personal handicap pursuit race for wednesday evenings when I was a member (back in the 90s) - which updated handicaps each week.  if you "over-achieved" one week then you started 30 seconds later the following week.  It appears to be still running - details HERE

I have run similar events for our racing beginners and they were also very successful - everybody finishing in a tight bunch (tricky for the OOD though ;-))

Icon builders .....

No not the official announcement - you will have to wait for that.  But a bit of clarity maybe...

Cirrus developed and owns Icon and has the simple strategy of working with other organisations to 1) Build 2) Market/distribute the boat.  We are in that respect little different to some of the much larger suppliers ... and we do sell Icons in limited numbers in the UK / Ireland even if we were/are really looking for professional distributors. We believe local representation by people who race the boat themselves and can enthuse about the boat is the way forward for Icon.  I wish, and we are after, more local based enthusiasts both owners and commercially involved ones. 

It might even help move the bulk of this 'debate' off the keyboard and onto the water where it really belongs ...

The agreement with Devoti had various limitations and obligations on both parties and we are not going to discuss them here in any detail whatsoever !  However it is relevent to state that there were/are geographic restictions and various other commercial clauses ... These were intended to protect the long term investment of both parties whatever happens and are very common in such things. 

Cirrus has recently reached agreement with another builder that we believe will be truly excellent  for the class.   BTW Devoti are not excluded from continuing to produce and market Icons destined for continental Europe under the effective working agreement - We are just as happy to collect royalties in the future as in the past if they are as happy to build and actively market the boat in the future.    

From Jan 2015 Cirrus will however exclusively source hulls from the new builder..  We are fully involved with the productionising process with these people -  just as we were with Devoti some time back.    The hulls they will supply to us in 2015 and beyond (in common with the new builders own distribution here) will be as light, well built and durable as the original UK built hulls that still set the standard.   The company and management are highly proactive and are as committed to working constructively with us and alongside us here as they are in their other other overseas  markets.

They say that August is a poor time to make any key announcements .... but it just worked out to be 'then' for us on this particular occasion.  Doh !

Mike L.

PS - Pursuits / personal handicaps ... If you don't like them don't enter is the simple answer.  However at BSC they have the highest level of support of any form of racing run.  Not for the purists possibly ...  But we want new people into racing surely ?  The 'Wednesday evening occasionals' should be nurtured along as the potential regular racers of tomorrow and not constantly told 'your races' are not really 'the real thing' imo.   If racing format changes get more people on the water and involved what on earth is the objection ?   Do we really want to race in diminishing fleets because there is no 'feeder' route  or race in thinning fleets.  Give them what  they value and then find out what more they want ...  Or at least try and stop knocking a form of racing others like.

I would devote one Sunday PM race EACH moth to personal handicap racing as well ....  might be good to mix up the various fleet cliques with the true 'occasionals' even more often - imo  it would probably do both a lot of good ! 

   


Edited by blaze720 - 30 Jul 14 at 12:08pm

I'm a little uncomfortable with peaky's formula given it was derived from the position we have now, which imv is wrong.

If we were to 'start over' with a formula, I'd like to see it grounded with say the Laser as a null point at 1000, or if that isn't acceptable, then the system reworked with it at 1100 and everything else works around it.

There would at least then be some basic in Logic that could be applied. The Laser after all doesn't change and shouldn't. (Having said that two minutes later someone will acquire the rights, fit the Laser with a Carbon Mast and change everything.

But if at the very least a website with input capability and an instant output could be built which isn't beyond the wit of man, it could be designed to vary say the crew weight and individuals could be ascribed to their own handicap.

By the way i ran the Icon through my version of that formula and it spat out 997 based on a crew weight of 160kgs, 985 at 150kgs & 973 based on 140kgs crew weight.

Edited by iGRF - 30 Jul 14 at 12:18pm

I didn't think there was a current published number for the quba.

Another thing personal handicaps can be good for is marking progress. We have a couple of series which are dual scored, and its a nice progress marker for new sailors as they go from personal handicap band 5 through to 4, 3 etc (the way our system works they are in bands equivalent to 5% increments of corrected time).

Graeme

I think we have been through this before but if you want to use a formula like Peaky proposed then you need to start from a known performance baseline.  If you want to change the performance baseline and work out the relative performances of each class from first principles then you are going to need a VPP that can be demonstrated to work for everything from a I14 to a Topper (I'll exclude foilers so that it is just probably impossible rather than absolutely impossible).  I'm pretty sure that you got no takers for doing that before because it is so difficult to do.

My offer of two years ago stands - if you come up with a formula that you can demonstrate works for I14 to Topper,  I will code it up and put it on a website for you.