Quick PY Question

Couple of points: Personal handicaps. My last club hated them, UNTIL I made the assignment process transparent. Then the take-up improved fairly dramatically. This was pers handicaps applied mainly within an OD fleet, but the concept would have worked for a menagerie.

Handicap calculations are easy. Anyone with a rudimentary grasp of Excel can do it - even me!.

Class	PY	Elapsed	Adjusted	5o5	AltO	Osprey	Hornet	Fireball
5o5	902	01:00:00	01:06:31		00:01:18	00:02:41	00:04:51	00:05:25
AltO	920	01:00:00	01:05:13	00:01:18		00:01:23	00:03:33	00:04:07
Osprey	940	01:00:00	01:03:50	00:02:41	00:01:23		00:02:10	00:02:44
Hornet	973	01:00:00	01:01:40	00:04:51	00:03:33	00:02:10		00:00:34
Fireball	982	01:00:00	01:01:06	00:05:25	00:04:07	00:02:44	00:00:34

The key bit is column D =SUM(C3/B3)*1000.
After that its just arithmetic to work out mins/hr difference.

yep - on a 90 degree triangle a fast assymetric is going to cream anything else on handicap - not sure that would go down too well.

Olympic courses are good for class racing or PY racing for similar boats within say a 100 point PY range.  Don't work as well for a wider range fleet - when you really need to use average lap timing to give a decent length race to everyone (but you need to have all laps the same length for that to work).

Mark

As a lapsed PYAG member, I can say that these guys do an absolutely sterling job.
I don't think that many people truly understand PY, that it is flawed but that it is the closest thing to flawless that we can have.
Now if every result of every race in the UK on a representatively disparate range of courses and coastal/inland conditions were exhaustively collated (assuming all development class improvements were frozen) then the system would be close to perfect, excepting that the mean sailor ability probably isn't equal class to class, and of course whatever number is spat out can't account for the disparity in some dinghies disparate performance between different wind strengths, or the nature of conditions  of the competition on which the number is being applied. Some may argue for a wind adjusted PY but that would just be a road to perdition.
Obviously what we have is not the best sample as some clubs are better at doing results than others, some classes are more numerate, and the length of time for a decent sample to accrue (many years) will see big improvements in some classes' performances.

The more ideal PY system ideal should be that the top sailor (assuming top sailors in each class are of equal ability) in a particular class, sailing a state of the art example of his/her class, should finish each race with the same corrected time. Of course this cannot account for the vastly disparate performance of each different class across the wind range. And this would be impossible to gather
The great lakes scheme is almost genius, and a very powerful tool to getting insight into changes into actual PY, insofar as it facilitates far more dynamic changes to the numbers than would be afforded by the actual PY scheme, validated at events where the sailing standards are pretty high, class champions are relatively abundant, thus decoupling the result somewhat from the (frankly enormous) gulf in sailor ability at club level.

Until the great lakes came along, if Paul Goodison / Robert Scheidt / Tom Slingsby / Nick Thompson went along to a multiclass pursuit race in lasers, which most classes were represented by their champs, they would get cuffed regardless of the conditions, despite their transcendental talent and ability over anyone else there. The laser had a pretty bum deal on PY as a result of many anomalies of the PY system (relative changes in other boats PY, standard of sailing within the fleet, decades over which sample is taken etc) The laser probably has an optimum performance window of >6kts, where the sh*t rig starts working and <10kts when the trap boats will dominate.
Anyway, this situation was wrong, and changing an established PY is tough because of the rolling, decades long size of the sample. My feeling is that the laser great lakes is pretty good now, with some youth squad sailors (very very good in the pantheon of a club sailing sample) getting near the podium, but not on it. I suspect that if Nick Thompson did the tiger trophy and it was light to moderate then if he won narrowly the number would be perfect. If it were very light or breezy and he won,. It'd be a bit generous.

I don't know PHRF but my limited understanding is that it takes basic parameters to get the PY, a bit like my formulas that I put together a few years ago. Trouble with that is that it will give a closer fit for catamarans, which are geometrically far more similar. For dinghies, it will not capture all of the intricacies of design.
An IRC black box handicap system could work, but again would be noisy for dinghies unless reasonably rigorous class measurements were made.

The only way to get a true approximation of physical reality would be a VPP based handicap, based on the state of the art in each class, although again that would be expensive to implement and inaccurate outside the bounds of any one wind condition, leaving most of the same problems.

I'm with Russ and Jimbo here, the system has come on leaps and bounds under the hard work of the PYAG, whose energy means that a lot of its shortcomings have been improved.

Originally posted by Bootscooter Graeme, the biggest problem with your aim of the "GRF Yardstick system" is the sheer number of variables, and as previously stated, whos decides what the windstrength is over the full length of a race.  Sailor weight will vary from week-to-week, and exactly what kit they're wearing will alter this as well.[---]Why would you add in a variance for experience?  Surely it's completely unfair to penalise someone for their performance, just because they've been doing it a while, and are rather good?

You can never get rid of the variables, that is the never ending problem they/we are constantly wrestling with. But you can calculate the fixed detail that is the boat and it can be quantified as a Performance Quotient, which will be its potential, which will of course vary according to how much wind is chucked at it and how flat or wet (salt/fresh) the water is.

In one design there are variables of sailor weight, height, a long skinny chap will work better than a short fat bod of the same weight even if all the boats are identical.

So if you give all the boats a fixed PQ based on the hard facts, then either come up with a scratch number for a typical average sailor (who that will be God knows) then that combination could be your recognised national handicap. the one times the other.

The choice we could then all follow, like Golf would be wether to sail off the scratch, or wether to have and improve our own handicap which would go with us depending on whatever we helmed.

The simplicity of that system the manufacturers get what they want, more of a level playing field less of lipstick chiselling discouraging new builds. We get what we want a handicap more in tune with our ability all those algorithms folk are working on to factor in crew skill go out the window because the choice is yours, sail scratch or handicap.

We then can spot the pro jocks racing in events and call them on it if they sail off anything other than scratch .

The Boat rating need never change or at the very least minor changes not these absurd lurches from 1078 to 1110 then expect me to freeze my butt watching boats I can just about hold on a good day, starting at the same time disappearing over the horizon ten minutes before my gun. (If you want to know my personal beef)

The question you have to ask yourself Graeme, is that if you swapped boats with the laser sailor in question, would the result be the same on corrected? I suspect not.

My feeling is that people take PY dinghy racing a bit seriously. If you want proper racing, do one design fleet stuff.
I guess historically, yacht owners coveting certain trophies have have bought yachts, and thrown resource at making sure that the yacht is the quickes for its measurement possible.

I don't think there is an ethos in dinghies of buying a boat on the strengths of its PY suitability for a given target race? Is there? Would be cynical I reckon, given that it is an empirical returns based system.