PY Numbers for 2017

Originally posted by iGRF So what would be so wrong about trialling a system based on fact with a fixed boat performance quotient and just manage the crew element by data submission, so you'd have say in the Laser a fixed figure of 1000, but the current national average crew quotient is 95 and just vary that bit, at least it would lend some logic for understanding when you try to explain to folk that it's not the Laser that's getting slower it's just more duffers are sailing it and or an organisation wants to make it more appealing for Laser helms to participate in one group of events so they manipulate the figures to their own particular advantage and don't worry about screwing the rest of us. ;-)

There is a growing group of single hander sailors that sail together regularly they've picked a boat they like or tolerate and they enjoy racing each other, they know the relative speeds and conditions where each of them and their craft excel or not, but they sail on the national handicap because the politics of varying from it are prohibitive. So they get more and more peeved off by the various forces that combine to make their coming together increasingly more pointless.

These craft are Solo's, Streakers, Supernovas Solutions Blaze and Phantoms and similar Unrig boats that take on Lasers week in week out. In their way they are building a close design fleet the Solo/Streaker thing is contentious as the faster boat gets constantly slower and the slower boat is deigned faster and the constant slowing of the Laser is also aggravating paticularly with all the additional options out there that have in reality sped the damn thing up in the last ten years, not to mention 'training and or replica' sails.

Rolling out the same old same old line of varying at local level just doesn't wash, something has to be done at national level to stop all this.

So, the Laser isn't sailing to handicap, according to thousands of results. Change that one boat, or all the others, as that one is fixed?

But what physical reason could there be for the Laser not sailing to handicap?  The boat hasn't gotten slower and it gets more results than almost all others combined.  

Originally posted by Rupert So, the Laser isn't sailing to handicap, according to thousands of results. Change that one boat, or all the others, as that one is fixed?

Defining the laser as fixed would avoid the trap of returns from clubs that adjust their numbers being distorted by everything being rebased.
For instance if clubx fiddles with its numbers and normally knocks 10 points off Merlins, because they win everything, the 400 return will be skewed if there are a lot of 400 vs Merlin races.
But is a Laser the right reference for debating the ratio of 400 to 4000? I don't think so!
Neither is it much use for a club correcting the slow handicap of Mirror, topper etc.

Plus IMHO, the Laser is for racing other L@sers, people who do mostly PY really ought to consider getting something else. It must be the boat which is most likely to not figure in the returns due to having OD racing.