New class PY numbers?

Originally posted by Dougaldog With modern tracking devices it should be an easy matter to have a 'sailor boy stig' ( or a whole school of SB Stigs) - so as to match boat and a range of crew weights and sail it over a pre determined course and then compare the results with a known factor. And yes, that could well be the L*ser as in theory the boat itself will not change. I know that the people at Sail Racer were quite happy to do some demos on this (and that may still happen).

Even better, I'd be more than happy with that sort of scenario, as I think would any prospective builder, especially if there were some sort of boat proving centre where you simply took your boat to have it ratified and it's PQ issued.

So, the obvious question is how does something like this get financed, and the only method short of trade sponsorship would be subscription. So, subscription to what? To the Handicap Racing Class or Federation of Classes, and that puts you directly in potential conflict with you know who, not that there's a damn thing they could do about it, lets face it they've f**ked about long enough and delivered nothing.

Originally posted by transient .... These factors have massive effect on relative performance, a much bigger effect than the complaints GRF has highlighted. A 2k for example might be a dog on a pond but put it on the open sea and it becomes a killer. A bit like complaining that a car has a puncture when in actual fact the engine has fallen out. It doesn't and can't address the real, major issues.

2k looks pretty dog-like on the sea most of the time.
But there is a point there, that asy boats like the 2k don't work on PY against Ents or Merlins or GP14s, because the boats are disparate.
Likewise racing the 400 against say Scorpions, we will lap them if the wind and course suit us, other days we can't shake them off.
An RS400 on a triangle course where our kite is just right needs a different PY from on a square course where we can't carry the kite on the reaches and have to do 40% extra distance on the run.
If people stopped trying to use PY outside the bounds where it can work, the numbers might have a chance of making sense.

To get back to th OP, most new classes are comparable to several existing classes. If you come up with a 2 person hiking boat, about 14 ft long, sym kite I'd look at the weight, sail area, sophisticated rig or not, then have a guess at where it slots in between a Merlin and a GP14. Or maybe Skipper 14 to Bosun spectrum?
Likewise if you are talking one man, one sail, just look at all the others of the same concept and similar size.

If you want to pluck a PY for the spice out of thin air, don't look at catamarans, toppers or Merlins.
Look at the int 14 and see how many excuses it's got to be slower. Look at the L4k and the 3k. Maybe the B14. Don't look at things with grossly diffferent length, weight, righting power or sail area, Don't even think about thinking about boats with different basic rig concept.

But at the end of the day, there are still going to be boats which don't deliver what their outline spec suggests they should.
Just as there have been designs of Merlin which never went anywhere, there have been many boats which are simply not very fast despite lots of righting power and sail area, even if you make allowance for things like beam at the waterline which makes a sensible boat for beginners.
Then you've got to allow for class rules which restrict performance, like some of the nastier SMOD sails or limitations on sheeeting angles etc. Or maybe the other extreme of boats with raking rigs etc.

Originally posted by RS400atC 2k looks pretty dog-like on the sea most of the time. Chortle, seperate discussion needed there about differing hull weights within a class (except that it's already been discussed to death). But there is a point there, that asy boats like the 2k don't work on PY against Ents or Merlins or GP14s, because the boats are disparate. Likewise racing the 400 against say Scorpions, we will lap them if the wind and course suit us, other days we can't shake them off. An RS400 on a triangle course where our kite is just right needs a different PY from on a square course where we can't carry the kite on the reaches and have to do 40% extra distance on the run. If people stopped trying to use PY outside the bounds where it can work, the numbers might have a chance of making sense. yep. triangular courses where an assy can fly a kite for 66% + of the course and a symm for sometimes 0%