2010 Portsmouth Numbers - Now Out

Originally posted by Graham T Well thats what it says on the website - up to 1185. In light winds I have always been well ahead on handcap sailing off the old 1178. Mind you as the wind picks up a bit I find results tend to slip off until its blowing dogs off chains and I can get planing up-wind.... Edit - see what you mean about "are you sure" now... misread first time round. Still I have always found my Miracle to be a bit of a bandit and am surprised it has moved this way at all.....

You wouldn't be so happy if you sailed on a tideway, when trying to beat uptide at 3knots you achieve 0.5kn over the ground, whereas the RS800 passing you is only doing 4kn but treble the speed over the ground! The downtide leg is over in a flash and doesn't help much... Our Miracles struggled on 1178 and will still strugle on 1185.

Originally posted by Norbert I stand to be corrected of course, but I sort of get the impression that the noise created by the great unwashed on this forum has contributed to both the Phantom and MR being overly penalised.

I think that the RYA guys are sensible enough to believe the stats rather than the noise. It might be the case that the noisier folk are more likely to use the new system than they were the old one though.

The Phantom doesn't appear to be marked as a development class, and rightly so. If it were you'd need to mark just about every other class as a development class - consider the difference between an original spec Laser with a wood tiller and a new one with flat carbon tiller and super expensive high purchase controls...

Edited by JimC

Originally posted by Norbert Originally posted by Roger ....and just to save you all looking Phantom is 1035 Merlin 1006     Clearly there are some seriously good sailors in the MRs, 14s and Phantoms. Is the point of this adjustment to punish the good sailors?

The other way to look at it: are the phantom club sailor', that the PY is based on, really that bad that the resulting PY can make any Steady Eddie sailing one look like a sailing god!??   ;)

Seems to me that none of these changes can really be described as either harsh or generous. For instance the Phantom  / Merlin change means that in a 45min race (average at our club), they 'lose' 19 seconds. In an hour its still only 27seconds.

So no really big swing against most other boats.

Bas - you seem to be saying that based on returns, the Miracle PY should have gone even higher - is that so?

And if yes, can you say where else the PY committee chose to 'tweak' the statistical returns (up or down) and why?

Edited by Hector

 Great to see all this interest and healthy debate over PYs. As I think we all agree that PY is not perfect, but then what handicap scheme is, but at least with the Portsmouth Yardstick ALL of us can have some input through the submission of our own results via our clubs.

I have now been involved with PYs for the last couple of years, both with SailRacer and the online PY system and now sitting on the PY Group, it is great to see the RYA putting considerable effort into moving the scheme forward. For a long time the lack of returns data from the clubs has been strangling things, hence the minimal movements we have seen in recent years. Now with the growing amount of data coming via the website, we are starting to see some meaningful changes come through, although only scraping the surface.

But don't forget the RYA Numbers are merely guidelines and starting points, clubs should be looking to make their own adjustments around their own results. Hayling have been very active in this area, producing handicaps that reflect their own waters and members :

http://www.hisc.co.uk/handicapPY.pdf

PYS Online cmakes it easier for clubs to calculate their own numbers and now with the RYA collecting real results data,  wea re starting to see many exciting data analysis possibilities for the future, for example as we know the type of water each club sails on, we can output handicap variants for each type of water, for example from the web data we see a differential of 21 for 29er between open water and lakes

So in conclusion if we want the Pys to improve we all need to get involved, badger our clubs to submit more data and look at making their own local adjustments. We are working with the RYA to put together a web educational programme to help the clubs make the most of the scheme