Racing Rules: Discards at laser nationals

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Discards at laser nationals

Printed From: Yachts and Yachting Online
Category: General
Forum Name: Racing Rules
Forum Discription: Discuss the rules and your interpretations here
URL: http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=915
Printed Date: 24 Jun 25 at 6:08pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 9.665y - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Discards at laser nationals

Posted By: speedy gonally
Subject: Discards at laser nationals
Date Posted: 05 Aug 05 at 1:05pm

Right i was just wondering on peoples views on the discards at the laser nationals

What happened was that in the first 4 the radials were split up into 4 flights (red, pink, green and blue) and in each race to flights would race together. Red/blue 1st start pink/green 2nd start etc.
On the fifth day we were put into gold silver fleets. top 100 got into gold fleet the rest were put in silver fleet. This was fine by me as i was 88th at that point and would of been hgher if it weren't for a black flag from race one and a disapointing 70th in another race. Giving me two races that had to be discarded
Before going into gold fleet we had used both our discards so i had got rid of those results

One thing i didn't realise untill i looked at the results after sailing in the gold fleet was that discards could be used in any races gold or flight.

Now i don't think this was a very good idea as it's fair to say that most people will get their worst results from sailing in the gold fleet.
if you were getting results about the 30's in the first half of the week and then go into the gold fleet its likely that your result will be around 60th. So for people that were close to 90and had got the best results they could all week there wasn't any point going out on that day as they would use those two races as discards.

then say someone was also near to 90 and had sailied well all week but unfortunity had to retire or were black flagged on two occasions. When they raced in the gold fleet and got two results in the 90's then they wouldn't be able to discard those results.
Because of this the person that was consistant all week would gain places or stay roughly the same whereas the person that would have got consistant races but had tow bad races would loose lots of places.

Replies:

Posted By: Harry44981!
Date Posted: 05 Aug 05 at 1:32pm

Yes i sawe that and thougt it was a little stupid. The same would work for the silver fleet, where people who had been getting results outside the top 100 suyddenlyy found themselves getting top 10's, so the silver fleet races would be their best races, so a BFD in one of thoses 2 races would be very influential to that persons results.

What i think works better is what we do in toppers- the first 3 days racing in 4 flights in a round robin system, completing 8 races with 2 discards. Then top half in gold fleet, bottom half in silver fleet, then a further 8 races with 2 iscards for the final series. THe overall scoring works out as: your final series points + half your qualification series points. I think this is better as it gives a longer final series (the one that matters more), and more points emphasis on the final series. However as the qualification series is 3 days not 4, then inevitably some peoiple will end up in the wrong fleets if a days racing is missed.

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