PY Lag Time

Originally posted by JimC The PY has always sought to reflect the observed performance of the classes out on the water at the clubs. Its been an average right back to the 1950s. There are subtleties - its not an arithmetical mean of all results, but the fundamental position hasn't changed. Whilst it might be very nice to have a handicap that reflected some theoretical maximum performance of each class, that's not what the PY does, and I don't really see how it could be done with a statistically based system - or indeed at all!

As I remember it in the 70's, our PY's at my local club were set by the sailing committee, onthe basis of what was thought to be fair. We had fleets of Ents, Solo, British Moth, Mercury, Mirrors and 'others'.
Being a small club, the ability of most of the sailors was reasonably well known, if Tony B was normally in the top three of the Enterprises, when he got a Merlin we got a fair idea of how a Merlin should go on our river.
If someone came along with a Skipper 14 and didn't do very well, and they also didn't do very well when borrowing an Enterprise or Solo, then nobody felt the need to change the Skipper 14 PY to give him a chance of winning. We would probably add a few points because we'd make a judgement that it wasn't an ideal river boat as the rig was too low.
The Mirror handicap was changed by quite a lot of points, because the current hurt slow boats, and the low rig was more shadowed by bushes. This was done by judgement, with respect to knowing how some decent sailors could make a mirror go, and how our mirror sailors did on other water. Those numbers stayed fairly stable in the 10 years I was involved, and people respected them.

As far as I recall, the 'RYA' numbers were thought to be a national average of similar judgements going on in clubs all over the UK, so there was a much greater weight given to skill level.
I'm sure people respected the numbers a lot more, and the stability meant it was not high up the list of things to debate, if you weren't happy with your results, you got some practice or coaching, or maybe thought about changing your 3-digit solo to a newer one which didn't leak.

Originally posted by AlanH As a fairly infrequent contributor to this forum, I'd like to say thanks to Chris for re iterating the improvements to the PY system. That system has indeed improved hugely over the last few years, since the brakes on changes have been taken off. Virtually all changes have been in the right direction, and I'd agree with him that most years from now on changes will often be more gradual. But those classes which add sail area etc will be caught up more quickly. There are some people on this forum who unfortunately like to talk b**locks, loudly and frequently. To them I propose they look carefully at a ratio, of how often they post, over how often they sail. If the ratio is greater than 1, you have a problem. The solution of course is to sail more often and talk b**locks less. If you do that in a committed fashion, you will be amazed at how your sailing performance will improve, and you'll just watch as your perceived problems with your boat's PY just melt away.

With the amount of data available now I'd just like to see data split up to inland and open water clubs with a number for each in addition to the "national" number, then at least I'd have some basis in "fact" for suggesting a start point for a change from the national number, if my suspicions about the skew in the stats towards inland returns.

So when does fighting for your argument become trolling? Sometimes people are stubborn, information deficient or just set in their ways, I can guess to whom you are alluding, but without an opposing view arguments stop at the bottom of the first page.

Originally posted by Telltale So when does fighting for your argument become trolling? Sometimes people are stubborn, information deficient or just set in their ways, I can guess to whom you are alluding, but without an opposing view arguments stop at the bottom of the first page.