Streaker PY number

Ok, the streaker sailor is a very good sailor, 70 or not. I would be pleased to beat him on equal terms.  He is also a good friend of mine so no insult or prejudice was meant. The point is, he is sailing a boat with an unfair handicap, in my opinion. So, as we are both of a similar ability he becomes unbeatable. My gripe is purely with the PY number allocated to the streaker.
Apologies to any one who may have been upset by my remark.

Originally posted by Neptune Originally posted by Rupert   It is a 12 foot boat with a fairly small sail, so I can't believe it is that much faster than any of the other similar boats in the small singlehander bracket, except in the conditions that suit it.     A moth is about 12 feet and that has a relatively modest sail too and thats darn fast

But back whern it was a normal width boat and lacked wings, let alone the ability to fly, it had a handicap of 100, which slots very nicely into the band we see now for small singlehanders.

I think it would be really good fun and interesting to have an event for small, slow single handers.  A bit like the Billy No Mates they have at Carsington SC for all the faster single handed boats.  (When is that btw?)

Certainly an event for streakers, europes, comets, bytes, lightning 368s, british moths and others of that ilk would produce some good competition and clear up a few grumbles.  If I thought there would be a good turnout I would argue for us to run it at my club where we have some of these already.

Nessa


Edited by winging it - 12 Jan 11 at 2:45pm

Originally posted by steve123497 Ok, the streaker sailor is a very good sailor, 70 or not. I would be pleased to beat him on equal terms.  He is also a good friend of mine so no insult or prejudice was meant. The point is, he is sailing a boat with an unfair handicap, in my opinion. So, as we are both of a similar ability he becomes unbeatable. My gripe is purely with the PY number allocated to the streaker. Apologies to any one who may have been upset by my remark.

Absolutely cool.

As others have said, if you put a light chap in a Streaker in a force 2 it will do very very well.  The Streaker is a very responsive boat too, so if that light chap is good at playing the shifts, I'd expect him to do extremely well indeed. From my experience though, once the wind gets up a decent Laser will spank a decent Streaker and hence start to balance out the standard PY's.

Having said that,  I am pretty convinced that the newer Streakers are faster than older ones, though I do agree with Alan Gillard that the difference isn't as extreme as with the wood/tin v epoxy/carbon Phantoms. The movement down in the RYA published PY for the Streaker from 1173 to 1162 (with more movement to come perhaps?) bears that out. Over time, as happened to the Phantoms, the PY system broadly balances things out I think. In the interim, one can either accept handicap racing for what it is, or do as other clubs did for the Phantom when it was clearly out of line, adopt local handicaps. But personally I would need convincing that a local handicap was based on a statistically reliable number of entries, ie more than the odd boat!

Originally posted by maxibuddah I..... The carbon/tin thing is a red herring though, they don't make that much difference, only allow the lightweight freaks in...... ......

I can't believe you think that!
Weight in a dinghy is bad.
Weight in the ends of a boat is worse.
Weight aloft is many times worse still!

Then there is generally a better gust response to be had with carbon masts.