PY Numbers (again)

You do have to bear in mind that a lot of the sailors in the fleet of phantoms moved across to the Phantom because the boat offered a chance for the "larger framed gent" to sail a completive boat.

Also now it has a lot of top flight sailors in the fleet who travel to events which allow people to see the boat sailed to it`s top potential rather the level of the club sailor - that would be my level.

There are also a lot of people who have sailed the Phantom for a number of years & therefore have got to know their class of boat for every condition & have sailed at most of the main big handicap events.

I sail a Phantom pretty slowly but with a style all of my own & do my best to hold the PY down & at 16.5 stone the Phantom is the best boat for me but realistically you need to sail the boat that allows you to enjoy your sailing at what ever level YOU want & that is suited to you & your location.

At my club there is a Phantom sailor who doe’s well, top of the fleet most club races & then there’s people like me who enjoys the sailing but do not have the techniques or the desire to sail top end sadly.

Edited by bert

Exactly Paramedic. The results also seem to speak for themselves!

Just another quick look at those GGP results..... I haven't really heard of any
of the guys racing in that fleet with the exception of Simon Potts in a
phantom. Anyone care to tally up how many titles and top results he has in
other classes?? I would have found the results more suspicious if someone
from another class HAD beat him.

I must admit I have all ways been a fan of the Phantom until all the changes. A roomy boat with plenty of power and reasonable rig control. It is a real shame that it has been tarnished with the unfair brush but ...
Not only has it got faster it has effectively got lighter. Many many changes have been made that have improved it's performance, not only the constructional, material change and rig changes but also the foils are far stiffer and lighter too.
As I stated before the handicap that the RYA has given it IMHO unfortunately does not reflect the true performance and this is not a dig at the RYA PY system as it does the best it can with the data supplied.
Here in lies the key. If all results were reported the Phantom handicap would be close to 1000 for the best sailors and I would see a fair reflection including all club level sailors to be around 1015.
I do have good grounding for this estimate as well as we had the Phantom Inlands at Draycote this year along side the RS 300 open. The finish times for the leaders were all ways within seconds of each other.

The problem I have witnessed is that most of the Phantom results I have seen in these larger ( Bloody Mary, GGP, Tiger etc) races are for Pursuit races (sadley the best Phantom sailor at our club only seems to sail pursuits too) . These have no affect on the reporting system as no times are, or can be taken effectively helping the handicap remain unchanged and the good Phantom sailors having are more comfortable win.

I guess the person we really need to ask is Dan Holman who I believe can calculate a reflective handicap from the boat statistics. Would this be fair on the Phantom sailors?

How else could we get a fair reflection of PY for any boat ... there must be a method for working this out for the new boats (i.e. RS100 etc) ... or is it more of a guess and then changed to reflect the results?

All I would like to see, I'm sure like majority, is a fair handicap for all, to ensure the racing is as close as possible for all

Originally posted by Merlinboy my initial post was meant to highlight the dominance of the class at the GGP, is this because people don't bother to turn up knowing the race is lost to a good sailor in a bandit boat?

Admittedly I wouldn't bother turning up in the Radial, just like there's no
way I'd go to the bloody mary in a radial (though I've heard the BM are
making changes?) however If I had my Streaker I would have more than
happily travelled up there.
I don't think people won't go because they feel less likely to win, or at
least I'd to think think that's not the case. Maybe if they publicized the
event more and got in some top prizes then people would turn up. I
barely heard a peep about the event in the lead up.
For instance, if there was a cash prize of £200, you can bet your ass I
would have been up there racing like never before and giving those
phantom fatties as much as a challenge as possible.

I think for handicaps, the bloody mary is a far more revealing event than
any other. And as far as I'm aware, if there's several of any kind of boat,
they're always spread through the fleet which would suggest it can't all
be far wrong.

I think the only people in the world who could be seen to have a good
solid argument for handicap race results are laser/laser radial sailors. But
if they want to buy such a horrible boat that's only redeeming feature is
its fleet racing, then they actually immediately lose all grounds for
argument.