2019 RYA PYs

Originally posted by Rupert So, change the laser in relation to 100 other boats, or 100 other boats in relation to both the fixed point Laser and each other. Given how the Laser has moved, with plenty of evidence to back the move, that would have been a lot of big changes, with far less evidence, for the vast majority of UK classes. Also, not really sure, beyond primary school maths, how it makes things more accurate?

No, it would be exactly the same weight of evidence. All the evidence is relative. Clearly in absolute terms the Laser has not slowed down, in fact it has probably gotten quicker with changes to sails, masts, foils and rigging. But it would appear that it hasn’t been increasing speed as quickly as a bunch of other boats.

To my mind it does make sense to fix the Laser given it has hugely more data than any other class and because it gives some sense of stability to the system.

PY changes tend to be smaller with more samples, as you would expect.

Originally posted by Rupert So, change the laser in relation to 100 other boats, or 100 other boats in relation to both the fixed point Laser and each other. Given how the Laser has moved, with plenty of evidence to back the move, that would have been a lot of big changes, with far less evidence, for the vast majority of UK classes. Also, not really sure, beyond primary school maths, how it makes things more accurate?

Rupert, everyone knows it can never be accurate, but its primarily about interboat relationships. So to more accurately represent that there has to be a fixed point, the people that designed the system in the first place understood that.

The fact is, it is a time based system. Time hasn't changed, Many of the boats haven't changed, but the other factor which is distance and more importantly the type of distance has I'm going to suggest and quite dramatically.

So you have 'drift' of the relationships dependant on venues where the data is accumulated.

That is increasingly apparent with the effect the great lakes numbers are having on the system as it has swayed towards larger water which favours the faster boats, so smaller boats like the laser need their yardsticks varied accordingly.

Whereas in the real world relatively narrow groups of us use the system without a huge disparity between fast and slow classes, many lakes have a cap on handicap, so fixing the Laser would bring stability at least to that section and there wouldn't be the increasing drift of the whole edifice aimlessly wandering back and forth.

Time is fixed, distance actually remains pretty much un changed, the boats themselves don't alter dramatically, all that changes is the type of distance and the skills of the returnees which basically corrupts the system.

So something needs to anchor it in reality, which fixing at least one boat would, maybe even choose a fast boat like an RS400 and fix that also.

Edited by iGRF - 11 Mar 19 at 10:25am

Ain’t that the truth. Arguably though, that’s the point. No class of boat in reality gets slower, yet PYs go up. That is counter intuitive. In fact they are going up either because a. they were wrongly assessed in the first place or b. Other boats have got faster but this is reflected in raising other boats PY rather than reducing the quicker boat’s PY.
Not much to get fussed by this year, but I support Mozzy’s 800 for 800 campaign, especially as I’ve done a bit of 2000 sailing this winter!

Not seen the 800 for 800 campaign. Didn't realise we could lobby for a great sounding yardstick! RS 100 kinda stuffed, isn't it?