Ding, see above...
My sense is that we have bigger fish to fry than changing our Handicapping system.
Mike
My sense is that we have bigger fish to fry than changing our Handicapping system.
Mike
+1 as there appear to be less PHRF racing for beachcats than class/OD style events.
Are there THAT many sailors that are discouraged from racing because they feel their rating is unfair/someone has a rating
beater
?
A good point about dead boats and why their rating shouldn't change (except for mods) from when it was a popular class (like the N20 at 59.2?).
The DPN on popular fleets (F18, H16) should probably move as they develop new techniques (like
wild thing
) and platform improvements.
So in theory, I could sail a little bit closer to the DPN on my I-18 if I improved the sailplan somewhat. The hull-form would probably be the limiting factor then.
Should the one-offs use some version of a SCHRS/DPN conversion until such time as there are enough boats for a 'pure' DPN based on actual performance? I guess it would still be somewhat based on skipper performance at that point, but that might be a blend of theoretical and actual performances...
+1 as there appear to be less PHRF racing for beachcats than class/OD style events ...
Beach Cats do not meet the criteria for PHRF certification, since that formula is used for larger boats that enjoy racing offshore. The Texel Rating system appears the most user - friendly system for custom one - offs. There is even a formula for foils.
apologies. I was thinking of the DPN numbers
My sense is that we have bigger fish to fry than changing our Handicapping system.
Mike
+1. I honestly did not mean to stir up this can of worms. I will say it has been my experience that the better sailor usually wins when racing SCHRS. It is a pretty fair rating system at least between like-boats, i.e F-16, F-18, N20 and pre-foiling A-Cat.
The real topic of this thread was how to build participation at regattas. I continue to be of the opinion that if the F-16's pay to race, they are welcome on the F-18 course. Others may disagree but when sailed within the correct weight ranges these boats truly are very close in speed, angles etc. Yes, I would prefer there to be LESS options in the sailing world-seems to me the Nacra 17 has done little but suck F-18 sailors out of the fleet-but I would still rather see more boats at events period. Hosting F-16 only and F-18 only events are a little silly to me, would you prefer to race in a 15 boat fleet or a 30+ boat fleet with the potential for more female sailors??
Sam has his eye on the ball <img src="<>/laugh.gif" alt="laugh" title="laugh" height="15" width="15" />
The F-18 fleet got alot of those sailors from Tornado when it imploded, so they weren't really
f-18
sailors ,they were olympic class sailors.So when there was no Olympic class they went to the closest style ,best run class, which was and is F-18. You're only option to avoid it was to push the F-18 for Olympic status which would have been a big mistake and was handled well by the F-18 class.
Sam has his eye on the ball <img src="<>/laugh.gif" alt="laugh" title="laugh" height="15" width="15" />
You left out fleet size. For bigger fleets including more females, it's hard to beat the Hobie 16.
Mike
But... I want my cake and eat it too. Is it too much to ask for cool boats and hot chicks at the same time? Are they mutually exclusive?
Yes, the spin boats are 'too much work' for most women. Sorry if that comes across as sexist, but from what I've seen out on the race course, there are very few women who are up to the task of doing all the work a spin boat requires, in both the setup and the sailing. It's a huge PITA for me too. So much so that I'm considering buying a Hobie 16.
I wish it were not so, I would love to see more girls out there. I have 3 daughters whom I would love to have out there sailing with me (or against me) all day, but after each one got a few rides on my spin boats, they wanted no part of racing on them. They will all happily go out on the Hobie 14 and Prindle 18 in my backyard, but when it comes to racing and putting up and snuffing the spin, not so much.
That is why I have always envied you guys who have a willing female companion. My wife hates sailboats, she thinks the whole concept is antiquated and she calls it
Stupid
. She would much rather I sell my sailboats and buy a power boat, so all she has to do is
Turn the Key
and go, no worrying about which way the wind is blowing, or even if there is any wind at all, or too little, or too much.
There are some frustrating days at no-wind regattas where I have to agree with her. Sitting on a sailboat with no wind, is about as much fun as sitting in a power boat...
with no gas!
Locally we have 4-5 vipers with ladies running the crew side. They seem to be doing well.
We race the f18 mixed, while my wife can crew, we do much better when I can convince her to drive.
I've always thought the spin boats go faster with the heavy guy at the crew position, and the lighter guy/girl at the back.
It seems to keep the boat more in trim that way. The only problem with that setup for me was, my girls were too intimidated by other boats, and didn't want to drive.
We race the f18 mixed, while my wife can crew, we do much better when I can convince her to drive.
You sure slid into calling her
the wife
in a hurry!
Well I have had about 82 dozen reminders already!
Just wait until you get to...
99!
The F-18 fleet got alot of those sailors from Tornado when it imploded, so they weren't really
f-18
sailors ,they were olympic class sailors.So when there was no Olympic class they went to the closest style ,best run class, which was and is F-18. You're only option to avoid it was to push the F-18 for Olympic status which would have been a big mistake and was handled well by the F-18 class.
Very fair point, and I am happy that the F-18 class stayed out of the Olympic limelight. In reality, most of these sailors haven't sold their F18's and still show up for major events like Nationals/America's. The reality is we aren't attracting new people to the boats and I am not sure how to change that mindset??
Women are more than capable of crewing if you set the boat up correctly for them with a 12:1 mainsheet and double ratchets on the kite. The Nacra 17's has over half the fleet with females crewing and men driving, and word on the street is sheet loads are much higher than on the 18 (remember, double trapped downwind with the kite up). Reality is they pouched the best crews from other classes (470's, Laser Radials etc.), paired with the top catamaran skippers, who happen to be male because we don't like to hand over the helm (don't try and spin it your way timbo-girls aren't scared to play bumper boat), and you end up with a winning combination. As the class matures and more female sailors gain experience driving, I suspect we'll see a role reversal. But to expect trickle down into the F-18 or F-16's fleet is naive.
How do we attract more of those CofC sailors to our fleets post graduation?
My sense is that we have bigger fish to fry than changing our Handicapping system.
Mike
My post regarding DPN was an example that even when a possible solution is presented that might move something in a positive direction it's dismissed and we go right back to banging on a solution that has no hope of working (submitting data). And this attitude is what is wrong and needs to be fixed. Seems like everyone is so afraid of failing they won't ever try to stick their neck out to make something happen.
Ping me when you guys come up with a plan it's getting boring reading the same sh!t over and over. Until then I'll keep doing what I'm doing.
Spin it any way you want Ding. Where's your big plan? Are you going to own this new system? Step right up and make it happen.
Mike
SCHRS works fine and is updated with real world data yearly.
OK, so far we have Mark Schneider, Dave Ingram, and Sam in favor of changing to a new system.
What we need is a champion. Don't pass the buck to me, you haven't sold me that this is a need and clear improvement.
Draft a proposal, and be willing to fight for it, then to own implementation. I'll be more than happy to add it to the agenda for discussion by the MHRC.
Mike
Add me to that list. It's long overdue and way past time to put Portsmouth to pasture.
OK, we should probably take this to a separate thread, but are we adding you to the list of people who will take action on this?
Mike
Mike...
This is not an MHC call.... FACT... Each Club makes that call of what handicap system to use based on what their members want to use.
BUT the MHC and US Sailing can take a leadership position here.
How did it work BACK IN THE DAY!.... it was contentious to switch from NAMSA to USA Portsmouth.... Those in the know had an opinion.... The sailors ultimately decided that the US SAILINGS stamp of approval had some meaning... there was no value in running a NAMSA table which was proprietary to a guy named Herb Malm...and was used exclusively for Catamarans. The USA switched in about two seasons following Darline Hobocks AND US SAILINGS leadership.
The world is different. Quality and qualified data simply do not exist for portsmouth calculations. Now the only real choice is SCHRS or TEXEL.... 9tapping into the stronger EU cat scene) So, since SCHRS is sanctioned by ISAF and thus US Sailing... SCHRS is the obvious alternative. The MHC and US Sailing could move the community by putting their good housekeeping seal on US SCHRS.
The MHC could make life easy for US clubs and get certified measurements for the one design classes that did not make it to the EU.... (Isotope, Shark, CFR 20 and some others)... This would create a SCHRS table with full integrity. The good house keeping seal of approval by US Sailing will matter to clubs running handicap beach cat races... US Portmsouth is still valid for clubs racing mono's and cats in the same start. Nothing would change for the US Sailing Portsmouth system. Race data is race data... independent of what rating system is used to compute the score-sheet. ...
Sounds reasonable. Make it happen...
Mike
Do we have any examples of the differences we might see between the 2 systems? Does SCHRS rate an F18 faster than Portsmouth? What differences would we see?
http://www.schrs.com/ratings.php
There's some weirdness in there...
Edit: However, after reading the 2014 change summary, I can understand the ratings a bit better. Sounds like a valient attempt at an impossible task.
Edit #2: Check the chart at the bottom of the PDF here for relative rankings of various boats as a function of time.
no handicap system is ever going to be perfect. Ever. With that in mind, here are how the two systems compare:
In SCHRS, F18 is the scratch boat. It's correction factor is 1 and everything else is based off it. Acat and F16 (2up) are rated the same). It's a little tough to compare them because the resulting correcting factors are a bit different.
To really compare the ratings, I've flipped around the formulas so that we are comparing them based off an elapsed time of 30 minutes for the F18...basically making it the scratch boat in both systems. I then took that corrected finished time and backed out the other boats elapsed times as if they all perfectly tied on the handicap corrected times.
Anybody step in here if I screwed this up - I didn't double check these numbers. (the code window maintains spacing in the table that would otherwise be ignored by the forum software)
Elapsed SCHRS Corrected
Acat 00:30:03.6 1.002 00:30:00.0
F16 (2) 00:30:03.6 1.002 00:30:00.0
F18 00:30:00.0 1 00:30:00.0
H16 00:34:21.0 1.145 00:30:00.0
Under portsmouth, again, normalized so the F18 has an actual 30 minute elapsed time and backing out the other boat's elapsed times assuming a handicapped tie, we have the following for Portsmouth/DPN. You can really ignore the value of the
corrected
times. All that matters is that the end result is a tie between the boats where the F18 ran the same length race in both scoring systems.
Elapsed DPN Corrected
Acat 00:31:00.8 64.5 00:48:05
F16 (2) 00:30:17.6 63 00:48:05
F18 00:30:00.2 62.4 00:48:05
H16 00:36:32.6 76 00:48:05
So, in this case, Portsmouth is considerably different on the ratings and makes it harder on the F18 (I'm biased anyway). Also notable is that the Acat and F16 (2up) are rated differently under Portsmouth but considered equal under SCHRS.
Under Portsmouth, the F18 would need to beat the F16 by 18 seconds to correct over them. SCHRS says it only needs to be 4 seconds.
Under Portsmouth, the F18 would need to beat the A-cat by right at 1 minute in a 30 minute race to correct ahead of them. Under SCHRS, it's only 4 seconds.
Under Portsmouth, the F18 would need to be 6:33 seconds ahead of the Hobie 16 to take the win. Under SCHRS, the F18 would need to be ahead by 4:21 to take the win.
In summary, SCHRS seems to rate the boats significantly closer together than Portsmouth does. Frankly, I think the existing Portsmouth numbers are closer to reality than SCHRS.
Thank you Jake, that's what I was looking for. It seems we may only think the grass is greener on the other side.
I would also think the baseline boat would be better as an OD boat that has been the same for many years. What happens when the F18 gets faster? Does everyone change or does a scratch boat cease to exist?
I would also think the baseline boat would be better as an OD boat that has been the same for many years. What happens when the F18 gets faster? Does everyone change or does a scratch boat cease to exist?
SCHRS is a measurement based system with tweaks. It is a complicated formula that predicts boat performance by physical dimensions and configurations. Technically speaking, as long as the F18 keeps the same foil type, mast type, hull dimensions, and sail area, it's SCHRS number should not change even if the sail shapes and batten technology make minor evolution changes and make the boat quicker.
The SCHRS folks have realized that there is more to it than this and they evolve their formula as things change. It's a lot of complex hard work and physically measuring boats has to happen.
The two systems are very different - Portsmouth attempts to calculate a handicap number based on actual race results. The weaknesses are that A) you have to get people to submit race results B) the software that was used to run the statistics was written in Fortran (which was brilliantly assembled but hard to run today...someone may have modernized it by now though) C) boat age and sailor skill level will affect the ratings. For instance on
C
, suppose the Hobie 14 is mostly sailed by inexperienced sailors and it's rating creeps as a result. Then a skilled sailor makes a campaign on it and wins everything in sight. Is that fair?
SCHRS suffers from the rigidity of it's system and that it is somewhat uncoupled from many of the other hard to measure dynamics that make a boat fast or slow. This results in the need for complex formula tweaks to refine it.
Which one is more accurate? They're pretty different. I can't honestly say that I've ever felt like a handicap race result under DPN was unfair (although Nigel might say different from Wateree ;-). But, then again, I have a different expectation for handicap racing and don't take the result quite as seriously as I would an OD event. Overall, however, I think Portsmouth has a better opportunity to be more accurate but suffers from human nature.
Great stuff, guys. This helps a lot.
You make a great point about boats/sailors getting slower. My opinion would be to not increase a handicap based on boats getting less seaworthy and sailors getting Alzheimer's. Unless changes are made to a design/materials, or someone can prove a gross error in calculation of a number (assuming it was based on a large enough data set), I would expect the numbers to be adjusted only to deal with the boats and sailors getting faster.
Mike