Personal Handicaps

Originally posted by GarethT Try thinking of it as ........ a bit of fun!

Please don't use the 'f' word on this forum.

Actually, Bootscooter, I agree with you that personal handicaps are not a good idea for normal, mass-start racing. I've been racing a cruiser this season under NHC handicaps, which basically start off the season as a base figure for the boat, then get modified each race to level everyone off for the next race, and so on; effectively personal handicaps.   

By the end of the series, we beat on the water what would normally be regarded as a faster boat, but thanks to the adjusted handicap he beat us. We had no idea until the results came out whether we'd beaten him or not. I found the whole thing totally demotivating, and could see that if we were to race the cruiser again next year (which we won't) the way to win would be to sandbag big-time on the days we thought we were losing anyway. Not exactly the way I want to do my sailing.

Where personal handicaps have a place, however, is, as others have suggested, in pursuit races, where they make the finishes much closer and more exciting. With normal PY's, many boats would be passed by a quicker one early in the race and then sail on knowing they had no chance. Our pursuit races are understood to be only for fun, so nobody gets worked up afterwards about who won or lost, the point is the excitement on the water.

I admire Jim C's mathematical approach, but many sailors' data sample is so small that after the first race I started modifying the handicaps conservatively every race just by feel, looking at why people did well/badly and the conditions. That's proved to be a pretty effective method.

For fear of offending people, the actual personal handicaps are secret, and made more difficult to deduce due to the fact that I also tidally modify the boat's PY, and have three different handicaps for each boat according to the weather on the day. Of course, nobody would stand for any of that normally, but for our light-hearted pursuits there are no complaints.

Personal handicaps are much easier to calculate in our system than std ones. Reason is that there isn't the problem of extracting boat differences from within the big variable of crew speed. And if thehandicap for an xyz isvwrong then the personal handicap will tend to correct it. We get most people in the right band after one race!

The club I used to sail at used to do mostly personal handicap pursuit races. The races were timed and the start times were altered every week. In general it worked well, the best sailors would still win the series, but it did mean every sailor that sailed regularly would have a moment of glory sometime in the year.
The odd person( ok one regular sailor ) did try and cheat the system, but if he was blatant doing it, the sailing secretary just ignored his result and his time did not change.

Originally posted by The Moo I should have said generally over the length of the series.Might try and respond more fully when I have a bit more time and am using a proper keyboard!

I hate typing on a smart phone!

We run one personal handicap series per year for our Sunday morning Pursuit spring series based on the Burghfield SC system and have been doing so for a number of years.

For the first race of the series we all start on scratch times based on the standard RYA PY of the boat and adjustments are made thereafter. If you finish in the top 1/3 of the race expect to start later next time, middle 1/3 no change, bottom 1/3 start earlier. We used to carry starting times from one series to the next but that proved unpopular as the time differences between the top end and the bottom were getting a bit silly and didn't take into account improvements made during the year.

I have just checked the series results for this year and the first 6 places went to the top sailors in the Club. The best middle of the fleet sailor was 7th and the best of the least skilled sailors was 10th. There were 20 qualifiers.

It was a similar story in 2013.

My personal observation is that the less skilled sailors do not capitalise on the extra help (which in extreme cases can be quite significant especially towards the end of the series). The more skilled sailors who find themselves with a hefty time penalty just try that bit harder and often succeed unless it is a drifter and they have no chance of catching. They then get given a helping hand for the following race and over a series it all balances out and generally there are no surprises.

I think it is the middle of the fleet guys who probably get the most out of the series as they use the any help they get to better advantage and can cause a few upsets.

To succeed in a series you need to get results and not be counting DNSs. Generally the top end of the fleet are the ones that turnout most regularly (its in the DNA!) so it comes as no surprise they do well overall.

I have to say it is not everyone's cup of tea. We used to run PH twice a year but this proved unpopular in some quarters and one series a year seems more palatable for most.

For me it adds a bit of variety to the mix and given that we have moved from an N12 to an Ent I am quite looking forward to seeing how we fare next year in a new class.

I borrowed the Burghfield SC personal handicap pursuit system for my clubs pursuit series a couple of years ago and have found that the best approach is to just rollover the adjustments to the next year rather than starting from scratch each time. If any sailors join who are rather handy then they can be given the same adjustment as someone who they regularly compete with on normal races just as a starting point. It's been pretty successful and as a result we have decided to roll it out for all our midweek series races.