PY Numbers (again)

Originally posted by Merlinboy

Originally posted by Merlinboy

Sailing club Bar rumors are that the Phantom is going to get a serious drop in PY this year, has anyone else heard this or should i ignore it?  If they did drop it do you think it would have much effect on the fleet size?  I often wonder if part of the success of the Phantom in recent years was the fact it is a Bandit round small gravel pit type clubs of which there are loads?

We have changed the number to 1030 which seems a lot fairer altough 2 or our club regulars recently attended the nationals and scored 8th and 11th out of 60+ boats.
Hunts is a small shifty gravel pit. The real advantag the Phantom has is the way it planes so early and accelerates quickly. It will pose the question of what we do with the 'classic' Phantoms that we have that currently use 1043.
We decided on 1030 as a medium number as a trial (agreed by the fleet itself). Some wanted faster, some wanted slower. On the whole it works well, it has made the boat beatable by sailors of comparible ability in other classes across a range of conditions (we all know each boat has its favoured conditions).
We did a PY analysis on our results and the leading Phantom (almost always the same person) had sailed down as low as 980 on occasions whereas the last boat (which was a 'classic' boat i.e. non-epoxy, tin rig) was more like 1130 or so.
I was hoping for great things from SailRacer this year but sadly it all seems to have come to nothing so far.....