Classic Boat PY's

What's the general concensus regarding a different (slower) PY for Classic Boats?

We often hear from certain classes that the older boats cannot compete against the newer ones which may have a different hull shape, and that accordingly in order to encourage people to buy and race older boats within that class, these older boats should receive some form of PY amendment.

For me certain points begin to stand out:

1) The PY of the class is a combination of both the older and newer boats, rather than the old boats being slower, perhaps the new boats are simply faster and so they should have a different (faster) PY. The existing PY could then continue for the older boats.

2). The better sailors in any class tend to be more serious about the sport and invest more of their time and money in it, ending up with newer boats. Older boats may be sailed by less committed sailors and therefore whilst the boats may be competitive, their crews perhaps aren't.

3). A lot of the so called Classic boats are little more than sheds, with 20 year old foils, sails and rigs. A poor condition boat will never be competitive, altering it's PY will then give it an unfair advantage over boats both within it's own class and those in other classes if handicap racing.

The concept of classic PY's will increasingly become more and more prevelant within our sport, I feel it is only a matter of time before classes like the Enterprises and GP's start to consider the issue, and what about old Lasers, Toppers and Mirrors.

Whilst classic or novice categories within a class are all well and good, when a classic PY for one class gives it an unfair advantage over boats in a different class it becomes a different issue.

ciao

Ian

A bit OT, but what happened to the mutterings of PY's changing with the wind strengths that I heard so much about years back. Look at the relative performance of a Vortex in a F2 and the a F6!

I stand by redback's comments - get something you can't cope with and learn - it's more fun than arguing about who beat who in a  slow boat.

I aplaud what the CRVDA is doing, and if I had my old Scorpion 625 I'd be there.  I wouldn't be worrying about the handicap though, getting the right side of a windshift makes more difference than a few points on the PY.

As it is, I lust after the next chance to sail my 4000.

A small question, if all the boats are old, surely its their relative performance that counts - has that changed over the years, or have they all got slower together? 

There are several problems with the portsmouth system - the biggest is that the handicap is based on club returns to the RYA.  This means the following:

1. The allocated number is based on the average sailor sailing the average condition boat at the clubs that have the time and resources to make a return.

2. The system doesn't adjust for the distribution of this data or provide any correction for the variance.  This means that development classes, which would have a skewed distribution are treated the same as a strict one-design that might have a very narrow typical normal distribution.

3.  There are probably not enough data for a lot of classes to be statistically significant and therefore any corrections are suspect.

All this is before considering differences between venue, wind strength etc.

There might be a solution that would improve things, certainly worth investigating.

1. All affiliated clubs must make a return

2. Special events (like the bloody Mary etc) where it is known that the top sailors in each class will be competing in a handicap race make a special return that has a higher weighting in the returns analysis.

3. All open meetings and nationals and club class races provide a return of position and age (this would allow correction for skew in the return for that class).

4. Every 5 years the RYA conduct trials using say the top 5 sailors in the main classes to collect on-the-water data. By focusing on the best sailors the problem of average class ability also being reflected in the handicap is eliminated.

This would be complicated and resource intensive for the RYA, but once set up would give better data to compile the handicaps from. Thus allowing different numbers for age / venue / ability to be compiled from the raw data.  It would still be imperfect and based on averages but hopefully fairer than the current system.