Does anyone use any form of % penalties for winning races?  i.e. if you win Race 1 then you carry say a 10% time penalty into Race2?

Something we are looking into, so the club legends don't keep winning everything and some mere mortals can have their moment of glory

We are currently using Sailwave and i can see any easy way of applying this rule (through a score code) other than manualy adding 10% on to the time entered

Alex

Just amend their handicap!

sailwave allows you to adapt the handicap, for either one race or until further notice.

we run is as first 4 have their handicaps ajusted 20/15/10/5, and the last 4 too.

ours is cumulative, and runs alongside the existing scratch series, allowing us to give a prize to the person that has improved the most over the course of a series.

you can get to quite big gaps. we have over 200 points between the fastest and slowest, and when ajusted it comes out within a minute if everyone has sailed their average positions. It means someone who normally sails off the front but only just squeaks a race ahead of the fleet, they are going to end up off the back by the time the personals are factored in.

So the result is that you have won a race, not because of your ability but because the best sailor has had his handicap fixed to allow you to win.

Shallow victory imo. Not one that I would want.

not quite. the handicaps are set to equalise.  Just like jockeys carrying more weight or touring cars carrying success ballast.

it works better on a series, when a sailor who consistently sails better than their handicap, as their handicap improves as well, wins.

it rewards the most improved sailor, rather than the best. It has been won by the top sailors in the fleet just because they have been improving too.

We always run a scratch series in the same races too, so that the best out and out sailor wins.

it is also a good way of judging who is the consistently best sailors and also by how much, because you can get to see your personal handicap against other peoples, and gives you an incentive to try to chip a bit more off it.

and if you are a top sailor it pushes you to go that much quicker, to get away further, so that despite the handicap you can still win the race.

So if Mr Club Loser wins the first race of the day becuase he had a bit of luck and sailed well he will be penalised in the next race to let Mr Club Champ go through. Not much of an incentive.

Have you thought of a buddy system where the top guy teams up with the bottom guy after the first race and their results are combined for the event (or something like that)? This will also give a chance of the good guys to mentor the bottom ones and pass on advice and the tactics they used.

yes bur Mr Club Loser never win's and then is disheartened and does less sailing. 

And the guy who trains hard, invests his time and money into his boat is penalised for doing well. Not much of an incentive.

Not everyone can win, thats life.

I've got a lot of sympathy for Alex with this idea, anything which encourages new sailors to get stuck in has got to be a good idea.  Think of it from a newbies point of view, fancy sailing, do course, spend probably £1500 on a boat, get shouted at on start line, finish last, last in to changing rooms, bar etc, gives up..

Something like this gives a tangible feeling of progress as they see their handicap altering.  We run very successful Personal HGandicap prizes at major club events, on occassion the event winner picks up the ph prize if they've excelled themselves, and  mid and back end fleet are happy to pick it up if they've sailed well.

If club legend gets upset then I suspect that they either don't care about newbies taking part or are happy being the biggest fish in a small pond. 

If you don't encourage your new intake then after natural attrition you'll end up with no one sailing..  just my 2 p's worth

Exactly.

Why should I bother to give any thought to my boat or my sailing when the effect will be dialled out in the final results. Best just turn up and see what happens, maybe sail badly when it doesn't matter to help when it does matter, maybe give up and do a sport where I'll get rewarded to investing time and effort.

I think your missing the point?  the top guys are still going to win the series just maybe a Mr Loser might have his day in one of the races of that series, which will mean more to him than the top guy actually winning the series!

As others have said: Keep it for just one of your series, so you can encourage a different set of people into the sailing and racing. We use Sunday racing for the out and out winner takes all, and the Wednesday Evening is run as a personal handicap pursuit race. Typically we get 50-60 boats on a Sunday, and 60-70 on a Wednesday evening. (Want to join us? Burghfield at J12 on the M4).

The details and calculations involved in the personal handicap are all published on the web site and everyone knows in advance how far they have moved the last week: There is of course a prize for the highest personal handicap, to provide something for the experts.

Over the last 3 or 4 years, with 18 races on Wednesday each year, we have had only one person win 2 races in one year - so it does seem to allow the winning of races to be shared. Do the club champs still race? Certainly over the last 2 or 3 years the prize for highest handicap has been fought over by 2 different National Champions: yet beginners can be out in the same race competing against them.

We use a scheme where the top 1/2 of boats get a varying number of seconds added to their start time (start later), while the lower half get seconds removed from their start time. All differences are cumulative and are based on seconds difference: but you actually start at a rounded 30 second start time.

Cheers, Chris

You could see it as penalising success, but there is another way to look at it:-

So you have all the top kit, put in loads of hours on the water and have a personal coach. You are probably going to be at or very near the top in most club events you enter, but if this is seen as a foregone conclusion by your competitors they have little incentive to go out? In time this is bad for competition so you are the top of an ever decreasing field.

If, however you have a self adusting personal handicap system you give some incentive to the middle of the fleet and actually give back some competition the the guys at the top because they have to keep improving to stay in front. Everyone is a winner!

Of course you still need you scratch handicap series so the guys at the top are still rewaded for their work/skill and so the middle of the fleet can judge how they are improving (if at all) in the 'real world'... whatever that is.