Quick PY Question

Originally posted by Daniel Holman My feeling is that people take PY dinghy racing a bit seriously. If you want proper racing, do one design fleet stuff.

Edited by pondmonkey - 11 Jan 13 at 1:26pm

Originally posted by Daniel Holman 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.

I reckon there (sadly) are some that have bought lipsticked (new verb alert!) boats primarily because it gives them more chance of winning.

At tomorrow's BM there will be plenty of people who have a choice of boat and will pick the one they think gives them the best chance of getting in the beers, based on the latest forecast. I have seen people turn up with two boats so they can decide on the day.

That misses the point of PY racing a bit for me.
I reckon the weapon of choice tomorrow will be whatever gives least chance of hypothermia. Something relatively slow and physical.
I may slather myself in goose fat

Originally posted by Daniel Holman 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.

What do you mean, if I swapped would I in the Laser still beat him in my boat? Yes I suspect that by now I should be capable of making a Laser go round our little puddle close enough to finish less than the four minutes I need to be within to beat him on handicap. Wether I could (as he does to me occasionally) actually beat him over the water would depend on wether or not he acclimatised to my little bit more wobbly boat.

But that all said precisely determines what I need to know, it would be my personal handicap I'm working on, not the idiosyncracys of the boat. Two Scratch sailors in those two boats right now would return the same result over and over because there is a dramatic imbalance where there should be none.

You could work out (you must have done to work out what the Punk should be) a figure for a boat based on the sail area, length, width, volume (you have to use volume as it effects the sea versus fresh water imbalance)and wetted area even if it could be measured on older boats.
That gives you a PQ not unlike the yardstick you have now (but with fixed ratio's based on actual hard facts not gerrymandered fiction)

Then the sailor calculation (which would aid newcomers) would be height, weight, and the years experience up to say a maximum of five.

That produces two figures.

The mean yardstick would be the boat PQ against say the mean average 5 yr experienced 6ft 85 kg sailor

You choose to either sail scratch, or sail to your height weight experience number against the PQ.

This takes the decision from the actual club and puts it in the hands of the sailor.

Gives new crew an advantage, want a better handicap? Teach a new crew.

Makes understanding easy, everyone knows about golf handicap, nobody could work out why a set of clubs that were one figure three years ago yet nothing has changed to them but because some competition that fielded lots of hot shots decided they should be something else, your bloody handicap has changed, come on see the sense of this... What are they on.. etc etc.



Edited by iGRF - 11 Jan 13 at 1:48pm

One thing I've never got my head around with Golf Handicap, is that if I'm a relative newcomer, playing off 28 (is it?) against someone playing of 4, and I win, does that make me the better golfer?