2019 RYA PYs

Blaze (very slow to tack) is not as suited as you lose more tacking on a shift than you would by ignoring it. · Originally posted by fab100

Originally posted by fab100

Originally posted by Peaky

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. 

Surely, not that simple. 
The PY system is not necessarily/solely about any class of boat getting quicker (or slower) per se, it's a compound of that (thru better set-ups and systems, specification changes, whatever) AND how well in aggregate those boats were sailed in handicap races where returns were filed AND how conditions and courses in those races suited those boats (another thread perhaps, are there 'windy' years and 'light-airs' years or does it truly average out?)
A bandit boat is often that because it has historically been sailed by the less experienced (in handicap races where returns were filed). Then the hot-shots pile in and, well, we all know the rest. 

All true, I was simplifying. I was looking into the question of whether there were windy years (or even decades) the other day, to see whether that may have been a cause behind the trend in PY deflation in sub 1100 boats. Data is very generalised, but I did find  this paper that shows that wind speeds have been dropping over the last 50 years or so on average, maybe by a couple of knots. 

Here is one figure from it. 