Another PY poll...

Whitefriars, almost always published numbers, but with a few changes for older development class boats, like N12, Moth and Merlin.

We don't have enough of any one boat to know whether the performance of a boat is crew skill related or an unsuitable handicap. I do feel that possibly we should be giving the really fast (505 sort of speed) boats a bit of a helping hand, as the lake is about 80 acres of sailing water. On the other hand, the fast boats get clear wind in front of the pack, so it may balance out.

Originally posted by marke Starcross YC - medium sized club. Locally adjust numbers - currently only for Laser, Laser radial and laser 4.7; have done other fleets in the past (Finn, RS400) Changes made based on analysis of archived handicap results data in local database extending over 2 years.  Would like to see RYA publish some standard software for doing this analysis locally rather than having to load data and then use software as a black box.

Hi Marke, you can do this using sailwave I am told. That is what we did at Hunts. Are you signed up to submit your results online to the RYA? If so this also autmatically does your analysis for you and recommends local numbers. I am waiting to see what it pumps out for Hunts.

Thornbury use published numbers unless class association provides additional info.
For instance Flying Fifteen Classic and Silver fleets have seperate numbers from the main fleet. Cherubs we have used 930 for new rules boats and with consultation with the guys sailing them we will probably stick with this even though a number of 950 exists.

For our cruisers we have adopted the Byron measurement system inline with other clubs in the Bristol Channel, however I have used these as the baseline for adjustments which filter into the clubs returns, but we havnt adjusted the numbers for actual racing

Portchester (small) and HISC (large) weight the numbers in favour of slow boats because of the Tidal conditions (I think the slow boats get +5% and Fast -5% on the published number). Not sure where the split comes!

 In practice it makes results closer but doesn't impact much on actual finishing positions.

Written in my Tea break if anyones looking

Frampton Small lake about 40 acres increase PY of spinnaker boats by 20 points. This is to encourage use of spinnys.  Although all you seam to do is spend the leg hoisting and dropping. (Not cherub though).  Otherwise published PYs avaiable in december because that's when the handbook gets printed.

Agree with Craiggo that at thornbury (our big peice of water) that 930 works well for the newer cherubs and the previous 975 works well for 97 rules boats. 950 is a trial number probably calculated from limited results from a mixture of new and older boats.