PY Numbers (again)

You hit the nail on the head there Mikey. Due to the racks you get a lot of righting moment on the Blaze so you really can drive it hard on a tight fetch where other boats are tending to have to depower and spill.

I used to take great delight leaving the Phantoms for dead on a close fetch/tight reach when it was blowing.... happy days!

The 300 should be quicker then the blaze, but by the sounds of the course and wind that was 300 teritory.  Blaze must of been very well sailed!

Originally posted by ohFFsake Originally posted by MB226 BTW, re the Waterhead on Windermere, maybe worthwhile noting that the guy who 'blazed' away from the rest of trhe fleet (including me sailing an RS300) to win by miles, has also been in the top 3 at the Blaze Nationals for the last 3 yrs and recently won the Blaze Scottish Nationals - he's not exactly your Mr Average... Wonder where you came in your FF15 Nationals ? Hey, I certainly don't claim to be any sort of hot-shot, and my Fifteen is a 35 year old "shed" that I bought for £300 and have thoroughly enjoyed renovating. On the event in question we were having a "good day" and ended up 6th overall, so I certainly wouldn't use my own performance as any particular yardstick (pun intended ). But what prompted my thoughts was that one of the quicker Fifteens was extremely well sailed and got well away from the rest of the fleet yet still got absolutely trounced by the Blaze's. Meanwhile, I would endorse your comments about the leading Blaze. But what is interesting is that he too absolutely blitzed the other similar boat, by an even bigger margin than the leading Fifteen had over us, and yet even the much slower Blaze beat every other boat on the water, and by a country mile on handicap. As you might appreciate, that started a fair amount of conversation about handicaps amongst those present on the day. To conclude I would re-iterate that my original post was not in any way intended to be confrontational, just trying to provoke an analytical debate. Which by and large it seems to have done, and I agree with the comments posted by others regarding wind strengths and points of sailing. Perhaps the answer to my other hypothetical question is that for next year we want the breeze to be 40 degrees more northerly, then we can beat all the way up and fly our kites all the way back! As an aside, both my crew and I commented on what a lovely looking boat your RS300 was. To be honest all the handicap debate probably started from a comparison between the Blaze and the RS300 which to us looked broadly similar boats, and we would naively have expected to run at similar yardsticks of c.1000, albeit based on the limited "snap shot" we had of them sailing in those conditions on that day.

Sorry,I was also not meaning to be confrontational. Point I was trying to make was that really good sailor can make a nonsense of the given PY figures at the best of times. Factor in a wind speed/direction that favours that particular class, and you're example at the Windermere shows the results.

As for comparison with MY 300, again in this instance, it can be ignored cos I simply can't sail the thing properly !

In my experience you cannot have a debate about PY's without confrontation! People get very defensive about their PY's and rightly so because the slightest suggestion that you have a beneficial PY is tantamount to saying that you are not as good as youre results suggest.  There is a million different aspects to consider when comparing PY's.  If you can master a difficult boat like the 300/700/skiff etc you will have an advantage because the PY assumes that half the fleet will struggle with boathandling.  Similarly and one that gets to me, is when a very good sailor sails a training/family boat.  The PY for these boats being set on the average ability level of the fleet! 

The worst example that I have come accross was with the Laser EPS. I raced one of these for a season off 1013.  It was the nicest boat i had ever sailed but the PY all but killed off the fleet. It is a testament to the design that they are still going today! They were no quicker than the blaze.  The RYA's response is that without sufficient number of returns, there is nothing they can do. Catch 22.