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Measurement Based Handicapping |
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Jimbob 
Groupie 
Joined: 05 Sep 06 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 77 |
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 Topic: Measurement Based HandicappingPosted: 25 Nov 08 at 11:19pm |
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"Just sounds like another way to reach the conclusion that class racing is what it's all about and anything else is just for laughs"
What a ridiculous statement. I have raced at open meetings and found them to be boring, boring, boring. And while I compete in class racing at club level and like it I also race regularly in club handicap racing and also find it to be very interesting. I don't know what clubs the people who subscribe to the above point of view sail at but at mine the most competitive and looked forward to racing of the year is the Wednesday evening handicap series run through the summer. |
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Jimbob
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G.R.F.
Really should get out more 
Joined: 10 Aug 08 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 4028 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 08 at 9:08am |
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Well I for one will be dead interested in anything you come up with.
I certainly think there is good cause for more work on the subject, even if it results in a two tier system based on planing and none planing conditions, I've been trying to put together something so that Boards and Boats can compete on a more level playing field I was also interested in the point made in another thread, about the time a given Boat takes to get round a fixed distance circuit on say inland water in one wind strenght against another on the same distance in stronger potentially faster winds, but with the addition of waves. I.E. the 49er in a Force 3 v say the V3000 in a force 6. which would be quickest? Has it been done, is there any hard data? It's a fascinating subject. As to class v 'open handicap' the open handicap should ultimately be the more successful if our experience from windsurfing was anything to go by. "In the day" when there was nothing else to do, before short boards and multi discipline, you would regularly see 3 - 500 Boards on a mixed "Open Class" start line , but even the most successful of One Designs, wether it was Windsurfer, Windglider, Mistral only ever attracted maybe 100 at national level. We put it down to human psychology, losing a One Design event you have no-one to blame but yourself, or you're own body weight/dimensions, whereas in the Open environment there are many other parameters, that can if necessary be cured by the application of the chequebook, so offered potentially far more commercial benefit. But whatever the psychology, the good sailors won both events, but it was always the better One Design sailors that dominated. However losing the open event didn't bear so heavily on the personal psyche, given the potential to blame slow equipment. Edited by G.R.F. |
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Stefan Lloyd
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Joined: 03 Aug 04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1599 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 08 at 11:37am |
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Good luck with that. Here's some random suggestions/comments: 1. Look at Peter Johnson's book "Yacht Rating" which is a fine read and explains why all open-book measurement rating systems are an arms race between the rule maker and the designers, which the designers eventually win. 2. We actually already have what are more or less rating systems for dinghies, albeit they are what yacht racing used to call "level rating" i.e. all boats aim to be close to the maximum allowed rating. There are called the I14, N12 and Merlin Rocket etc i.e. development classes. These are essentially attempts to capture the performance characteristics and produce a set of trade-offs. They've all produced extreme features in one way or another and that, again, is what open-book measurement systems do. 3. Multi-number systems are popular for yacht rating in some parts of the world. They were tried in the UK and deemed a fiasco. So you need a windspeed to apply it. What windspeed is that then? When in the race? Where on the course? British sailors weren't in the least bit keen on a handicap system where the race officer pulled a windspeed number out of somewhere that then decided the result of the race. 4. Measurement-based systems work pretty well for displacement boats. They've never been shown to work too well for intermittently planing boats. Writing such a VPP is a much harder problem.
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Chew my RS
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Joined: 05 Oct 05 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 790 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 08 at 12:02pm |
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Some excellant points Stefan. Sounds like a god project, but you'll need to bound it quite tightly to make sure you stick to what is important (in terms of getting a good mark). IMHO such a system is ultimately unworkable for dinghies, but that does not de-merit the worth of investigating such a project. Perhaps it might be sensible to limit it to, say, singlehanded hikers (lasers, Solos, Streakers etc) as these are the simplist boats with the fewest variable parameters, and also well founded PYS for validation purposes? Also, don't forget, if this is for a NA degree (which I believe it is) you want lots of talk about techy things like Froude and Reynold number scaling difficulties (hence viscous and potential drag can't be scaled simultaneoulsy - leading to difficulties with rating different sized boats that plane at different speeds). I'm sure you've got this all covered, but the most important thing is to get a good mark, not do an interesting project (both is great though), so you've got to tell them what they want to hear (which most probably is the techy stuff and not the organisational/political issues) |
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Guest
Newbie 
Joined: 21 May 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 0 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 08 at 1:09pm |
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Would people really rather race handicap events just so they had an excuse for not winning? That is one of the things I have always found so unattractive about keelboat racing; when I have ever asked anyone how they got on you'd always get an explanation about why they didn't win due to the rating ... |
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Isis
Really should get out more
Joined: 01 Sep 05 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2753 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 08 at 1:10pm |
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Once again thanks for all the responses - good and bad this is exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to hear.
I agree with all the comments that handicap racing will never be as competitive as OD fleets but with the sheer range of classes available Handicap racing will always have its place and the better the rating system (be that PY, or anything else) the better the experience will be. Simon - I don’t know very much about SCHRS and even less about Texel but I am aware of them and when I do get round to looking at them more closely I may well take you up on that offer. I gather they are both formulae based systems? My system will be VPP based which is why I didn’t mention them before but it would be great to have the input of someone who’s spent as much time thinking about this as I think you probably have! Stephan - Thanks for the tip on the Peter Johnson book, Il see if I can get hold of a copy. My preference is against open rating rules for exactly the reason you mention – all open rules eventually start pushing the designs towards a one extreme and that has been the death of many a rating system in the past. Even IRC which is completely closed has some degree of type-forming as designers start to work out how to exploit the rule. The issue of trying to model a range of designs in displacement, semi planning and full planning conditions is really the make-or-break part of the project (and probably the reason it’s not been done before in any detail) but I’ve got a few ideas which should allow some reasonable results. How reasonable they are is really the important thing and if the only result is that I prove the idea is too difficult to put into practice then that’s fine. |
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skslr
Posting king 
Joined: 24 Jul 06 Location: Germany Online Status: Offline Posts: 139 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 08 at 1:36pm |
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We do a lot of Skiff (-type) Yardstick racing on the continent and Porthmouth-Yardstick works generally fine for me. Some race comittees changed to HISC rating recently as it does seem to adapt to changes in development classes like int14 faster. As long as the competing boats have similar characteristics they all will suffer in light/unstable winds and fly in high/stable winds so numbers do not need to be adjusted to wind speed. Compared to one design racing I like the advantage that as a bad crew on a fast boat you can still compete with better crews on slowers boats instead of just chasing the pack... This whole thing breaks pretty easily, though, if you add boats like RS400 with different characteristics and VMG varying not as much across the wind range as e.g. VMG of an RS800. In a club race with conventional dinghies and keel boats you have to sail for the fun only and accept it will never be "absolutely fair" anyway. A measurement based handicap system might work on existing One Design classes, but as soon as designers would start building to public formulas races would be won by slow and ugly designs with bad handling characteristics and only their individual rating being even worse. I guess, though, that already assessing wetted surface area of a skiff type boat for different sailing modes ("displacement + crew on foredeck" to "planing + fully twin wiring") would be a nightmare. |
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Stefan Lloyd
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Joined: 03 Aug 04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1599 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 08 at 1:46pm |
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There's plenty of class keelboat racing going on.
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Guest
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Joined: 21 May 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 0 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 08 at 2:25pm |
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Granted; I was thinking more of boats with accomodation rather than the likes of SB3, FF, Melges 24 etc ... Interestingly no-one ever says "We won, but we do have agreat rating in those conditions ..." |
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AdrianM
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Joined: 03 Apr 06 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 33 |
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Posted: 26 Nov 08 at 2:41pm |
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Scooby One part of the SCHRS that for me doesn't work well is the way that it doesn't (at least as far as I know) make adjustments for developments. For example the latest Nacra/Hobie/Capricorn F18 all sail off the same handicap as the original Inter 18 yet they are clearly faster boats. I would go so far as to suggest that this adversely affects the turnout at opens etc as irrespective of ability the Inter 18 crew know that they are not going to get the chocolates. |
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