I think the Laser 1 will go slower again by a few points and the RS300 a bit faster again with its PY  dropping to 970- 975.    

But as probably the longest serving member of the RS400 fleet, I can remember one of the first "try-a-400" days at my club -way back 94/95 - the Fireball sailors said no way it'll ever match a Fireball. Well, in PN terms..they're still playing catch-up  Trapeze not required. Remains one of the most inspired designs in modern sailboat racing!

Originally posted by patj Originally posted by Oli I predict that clubs might start to adjust locally, and that the national database is for recommendation on where to start from, or maybe not....   Our little puddle club is going to try adjusting this year - puts the Albacore back where it was a couple of years ago and gives the day barges a serious knock back! Spinnaker boats have no hope of sailing to PY on the lake anyway.

Originally posted by RS400atC Originally posted by pompeysailor If clubs adjusted PY locally then they wouldn't be able to submit PY returns - is that correct? not as I understand it.

Common sense tells us that an RS800 will struggle to sail to its PN on a 40 hectare pond. A well informed race committee at an inland club should be able to come up with something that helps ease their pain a little without giving them an unfair advantage, maybe coastal clubs could do similar for Ents/Solos or WHY.

I said in t'other thread that it should be easy enough to work out how much advantage dropping 15kg of the hull weight or adding an extra metre of sail might bring and PNs adjusted accordingly. I'm not sure what happened to the 'nova when they reduced the weight, or the Merlin when they adopted a 25% larger kite but shouldn't any fundamental change to a boats specification attract a new EN based on such a calculation?

Not sure a database is required though, weight loss -1% for a 10% weight reduction, SA -1% for each 10% increase in sail area (or whatever numbers the PYC deem accurate) until it works itself out in the returns? 

OTOH there is, as you say, some merit in keeping things as simple as possible.... 

Factor in that the PYS online reckon we are about 1019 but that doesnt really take into account the vast majority of our results are from myself and another guy who were at the sharp end when we sailed lasers. It should come back down now we have a few others sailing who are not sharp end of the fleet material.

You have to feel sorry for the Terra Sport at -25.   Still, those pesky little fec kers are annoyingly quick.  From now on, I may feel a tad less guilty sailing over them to windward 

And how did the Halo go 5 points slower? Surely some mistake?

My suggestion would be to peg the numbers at the boats historic peek. Not to do so creates some outrageous bandits. 

L3000 (at first glance) now on 1085, a non issue I know. But if any declining, experienced old duffers out there can find a youngish crew and want a new taste of glory.

And the helms are getting older 
 

Compared to six years ago the 3k has gained 76 points advantage over the Blaze. Blaze lost 23 points, 3k gained 53....it all adds up.

Just as well there isn't too many of them about.


edited to correct maths

I wonder if this has more to do with the clubs (And the size of the water) making the returns than the boat. You would think with the second highest number of races that must be as good an average as you're going to get and have little choice but to declare the PY correct.

I suppose more races doesn't necessarily mean good quality races and activity doesn't necessarily mean ability. There will be many more poorly sailed boats than well sailed ones and many hundreds more old boats, with knackered sails all contributing to this figure.

It did strike me as odd though, i would have expected a similar move the other way. The Streaker has!

Spot on

A couple of years ago,  I did some analysis of the Solo data,  calculating handicaps for four different age ranges of solos.  The oldest boats returned a handicap of 1213 and co-incidentally the newest boats returned  1143.  This represents nearly four minutes in the hour.

As you say the volume of data may not necessarily mean quality output,  with a number of factors that may skew the handicaps depending on the data sample and its context :

• Age of boats and their race quality
• Crew skill factor (CSF)
• Type of water
• Wind strength
• Tide/current
• Water state eg smooth or big waves
• Course configuration
• Size of fleet -  lots of boats on the race course may mean slower times
• Variety of boats in the race eg asymmetric v symmetric
• etc etc

The good news and looking to the future,  the technology exists to produce more granular and context sensitive handicaps.  This could generate more participation,  particularly encouraging certain classes to turn up even if the conditions did not suit them and not to their optimum.

So either contribute or stop complaining.

With no disrespect to owner's of older Solos but like in other fleets, the fastest sailors are often in the newest boats with the latest sails; often after two or three years these boats are sold on to good club racers; and newbies often buy old boats at low entry point price; so if anything, I am surprised that the spread in not greater than 4 minutes in the hour.

In anycase at our club the spread of finish times is often considerably in excess of 4 minutes.

However you look at it PY handicap racing is a compromise; best considered over a series rather than one off races; but most importantly those involved should not confuse personal handicaping with handicaping based upon the performance of the boat.

If you could get clubs and events to submit time data, surely it wouldn't be that difficult for everyone to have a personal handicap, or an "adjustment" to class PY that everyone could race against on a National basis.

Bit like a Golf (yuck) handicap

Of course hull shape and weight has no influence then..... Hobbit feet are worth 20 points on PY though I hear....

However... PY is based more on CSF as it is the average of the sailors and not the boat potential.... (but we have been here way too many times before).

Off you go then.

Precisely, the reason this system fails is precisely because the system trys to work out what handicap everyone would need to finish equally or so I'm led to believe, but equal to what?

Equal to the boat that won that particular race.

So it depends on the relationship of said Laser to whatever is the fastest boat in any given race environment and in the example of the Great Lakes lot, the lead boat of whatever it's type is very likely to be sailing quickly and so the Laser needs a bigger and more generously favoured handicap.

So it is nothing to do with the Laser or it's integral speed or even who is sailing it, the system is defined by the speed of lead boats around the country and they are clearly getting quicker.

We'll never know that of course unless there is an anchor and the Laser should be it.

A part of me thinks that no boat's PY should ever rise as no design gets slower.

On the one hand, over a single year and 20,000 results I wouldn't expect the standard in the Laser fleet to drop measurably. On the other hand, even if the standard has dropped, the PY scheme should try to filter this out as, in an ideal world, it would be a measure of boat performance rather than a measure of how well the typical owner sails it.

I appreciate that is difficult, but surely worth investigating. The RYA PYAG appear reluctant to interpret the results at all and prefer to just present the raw statistical result. 

Surely that's the point, the PY should represent an average sailor sailing the boat in average conditions, given big enough numbers that will just happen and any 'adjustment' can only be representative on a local basis. As soon as you try to 'filter' statistics it stops being statistics and becomes guesswork.......

The Laser was always a good 'average' boat. it never really excelled in any conditions. Other boats that are considered 'bandits' have a performance window where they really do perform well and definitely sail well below their PY.

Even a beat up old laser with a new sail can be surprisingly fast as many people found out when they came to the Open Meeting at Hunts and my old wreck lead them round.

The new controls didnt make the boat any quicker per se, they just made it more manageable for mere mortals so they sailed quicker. the top guys were always the speed they were (I believe one R Scheidt preferred using the old style kicker for quite some time after it became class legal).

Who in the world is going to be able to determine a "current national average crew quotient"?  Can you imagine how much people like you would howl if a committee sat down and said "oh, those X class guys are only sailing 95, because they all use too much vang and I watched the championships and class Y over in the next bay were doing a much better job of picking the shifts last month."???

Seriously, I can't actually estimate the relative standard of the classes I sail myself, and I'm damn sure that people from outside those classes would have much less of a clue than I do.

Not correct. As the PY is based on results it will be a yardstick of the people sailing as well as the boat performance. This is why some boats that have has significant development recently are getting slower not faster.

I do believe they take the previous 2 or 3 years data into account to help dump out year on year variations with less emphasis given on the older data.

adjust it locally perhaps?

No (but see below ) the aim is to "enable clubs to allow boats of different classes to race against each other fairly. The RYA actively encourages clubs to adjust handicaps where classes are either under or over performing compared to the number being used." so to rate the boats not the sailors (allowing local variations where prevailing conditions are more or less suited to the boat on question). The fact is that there is no practical way to prevent the sailor from affecting his boat's performance so the PN does actually end up reflecting the 'fleets' performance as you say. But that's the consequence of the imperfect system with too few results being returned to make it a 'proper' statisticial analysis rather than the aim of the system.