handicap racing

This is not always true.

A few exceptions that favour the slow cats are increasing winds during the race, a persistant windshift in the last part of the race, windconditions that are to low to properly fill a spinnaker, very big winds.

Afterall this year at round Texel a 20 year old Prindle 15 ended up 2nd overall, only 35 seconds from winning this years round.

The advantages/disadvantages work both ways. But most often you see the modern boats win out as typically these are sailed by more serious racers, while the oldies/slow boats usual have some recreational crews on them that do a event only ones or twice a year.

Wouter

Thanks Wouter for the extremely qick reply! I guess your on holidays, otherwise; should you not be at work? <img src=

alt=

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Just kidding, it really is great to have some one like you here on the forum, keeping it warm and sharing your engineering wisdom as well as sailing skills with the rest of us. I'm actually set to start studying marine technology next fall at Norway's University of Technology. Truly looking forward to it!

Being on a fast boat is extremely dangerous for your karma in handicap races <img src=

alt=

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You can win with a huge margin becouse slower boats loose all pressure after you finished, or you can loose all pressure while the boats behind catch up to you. It works the opposite way for slower boats, so over time it will even out. But, if everybody are moving slow, time runs faster for the fast boats becouse of the difference in handicaps.

Jimi, my family is aiming to move to Trondhjem (the same city the Norwegian University of Technology [and Science, shortened N.U.T.S] is in) in the next year or so if everything works out as planned. I might bring the Tornado up there, but will bring a 20 footer no matter what for distance racing. The deal with the admiral (wife) is that I can also move into the F-16 class. Hope you are prepared to continue sailing hi-performance cats! Trondhjem is terra incognito when it comes to cats, especially cats that moves fast, so the ground is fertile for recruitment. The yachting club is positive to both parking/storage and participation..

Macca's Taipan cleanly falls into the category of

high tech beauties

. Now...to the question.

Handicap racing - especially when used for distance racing - does not specifically favor one design over the other. Rather, it's the conditions of the race that favor one boat or another and it can favor the Hobie 16 over the F18 just as easily as F18 over Hobie 16. Handicaps are designed to average a boats potential over an upwind / downwind course. Distance racing, however, is rarely and even distribution of upwind and downwind sailing and because of that, the handicap fails when trying to apply it to boats that have wide differences in their respective upwind and downwind potential. Additionally, if the wind strength changes throughout the distance it will also favor one boat over the other.

Suppose the distance race is upwind the entire way and the spinnaker boats are not able to carry their spinnakers - the corrected time will heavily favor the non-spinnaker boats. The opposite is also true.

Suppose that after the front of the fleet finishes, the wind were to die - this would favor the faster boats that were able to finish before the wind died. Suppose the wind got stronger after the faster boats finshed, this would favor the more slowly rated boats that were still on the course. This can also happen on a buoy course race.

Point is, handicap racing (any type) is even more inaccurate when applied to some types of distance racing. The best way to avoid major inaccuracies is to group similar boats together in classes to be scored separately. For fair scoring, spinnaker boats should not be scored against non-spinnaker boats and if the fleet is large enough, it would make sense to break things down even further.

Jimi,

Sometimes,life is not as it appears!

Mention that topic to anyone who has raced against the H16 sailors from Puerto Rico.....they will most certianly smile and tell you a story or 10!

The boat [ and handicap] is one thing,..the brains behind it is another thing.

For example, in this years St. Thomas Rolex, in one race, a H16 non spin beat a I20 Spin on corrected time [..ok,..the H16 was a current World Champ, Kiki Figeruoa].

..however, in the regatta, in a particular race, the same h16 skipper/boat was beat, on corrected time, by a St. Croix 1992 N 5.8 [ Doug Derue and Jay ],...which is kinda historic for us..:-)

...point being,...put a good skipper on any boat.....!

..or..

...put a so-so skipper on any boat....!

regards,

Bruce
St. Croix
USVI

ps. Wouter, maybe you can post a pic of the P15,..you had directed me to a pic a few years ago,....nice boat!

Depends on the conditions. In our fleet we race with schrs rating, the Tornado is the king with 3-4 bft, A cats win with less wind and maybe the H16 might be a candidate for > 5 bft (no F18 here, so I don't know).
Anyhow, on small races with diferent boats the final result is your time multiplied by some theoretical factor and this makes the result more than questionable. It's a way of getting mixed fleets together, but don't take the results too serious.

With the yardstick system used here (Australia) the actual conditions do, but rarely have the major influence on the

corrected

placing’s. If you look at the results of any

major

regatta (one where there are sailors of comparable ability sailing in a variety of different classes and size of cats) It is virtually always the

top

sailors who fill the first 10 places, regardless of the conditions, and it is the “lesser” qualified sailors down the placing’s who claim that it was the “conditions” that disfavoured them.
Funny that?

Distance racing, the conds can make a massive difference.

Looking at the overall picture for this weekend, wind is looking like it will be east most of the time. However, this may or may not promote the sea breeze later.

The course varies between 55 and 82 (true) so it will be a beat / fetch out. However, the sea breaze will probably add more south to the wind, so depending when it arrives, the early boats may or may not carry their kites back again. If they do not this could make a massive difference, or the wind may just be spot on for a twine wire kite reach for the fast boats to lay the waypoints and then the slower boats need to gybe down wind.

But for racing around the cans I agree with Darryl, especially over a full series. The best sailors usually do best in distance racing as well. But this years Texel serves as a good example on how the conditions can favour different designs.

Formula racing is the future.

Assume that the rating of your boat (and the rating for your opponent) are just 2% off the

correct

values for that day and race course (and this is VERY optimistic for the simplistic formulas used in schrs or texel). This corresponds to an error of about 100 seconds for a 1 hour race. In one design you usually see quite a few boats crossing the finish line within 100 seconds (almost 2 minutes). In one desgin these boats have a well established order, in races with rating they don't. Of course, the good sailors will beat the bad ones, but it makes no sense in establishing an order by comparing corrected times that are within these error limits.

Please explain to me how 2 % offsets mathematically lead to 100 second ofsets in 60 min = 3600 sec races as 100/3600 = 2,8 % ?

100 seconds now miraculously grows to 120 seconds.

Claus, 2 % of an hour = 72 seconds and you just talked it up to being 120 seconds in the span of only 4 sentences.

Why is this ?

Wouter

Yes Claus, agree on that also. One design racing is more accurate than formula or yardstick.
Topic in this discussion however is not one design vs formula or yardstick, but wether it is best to be on a fast boat or a slow boat when competing on yardstick.
Silly of me to slap on

Formula racing is the future

and de-rail the whole discussion. There are lots of arguments on both sides, but we have been trough that so many times before..

Wouter, no miracles in here. The final result is calculated as a difference in corrected time (negative u win, positive I win). If you combine two results with errors in a sum or difference, the error of the result is calculated as the square root of the sum of squared errors of each variable. Thus err=Sqrt(70^2+70^2)=100. Of course, saying that 100 seconds is

almost

2 minutes is a matter of taste.

However, the actual numbers are not important. Make the error 2.5% and you get 2 minutes (ok, 124 seconds). The important thing is that we are using very simple parametrized formulas, which might give an idea about the speed of the boat but which have an error (which depends on boat desgin, winds, waves, etc). In physics, I have never seen such simple formulas to describe reality within a 2% error over the entire range of variables. One should have in mind this

little problem

when reading results based on ratings.

Rolf, having in mind this, I don't think neither fast nor slow boats have an advantage. It's the combination of design (i.e. daggerboard yes/no spi yes/no modern sail plan yes/no hull shape, wind conditions) which fixes if you have a

good

,

bad

o

correct

rating with your boat.

It can help in round the cans racing to make sure the faster boats do more laps so boats are sailing as much as possible for the same time and in the same wind!
Gary

Laps are a novel concept in the US for buoy racing.

While I think it makes a lot of sense... It takes the handicap one design debate to an entirely new level!

What do people who do this think of a race of a Hobie 16 doing two laps and getting a finsih time while the Nacra 20 completes three laps and gets a finish time?

The computer figures out how well you sailed.

So the corrected time for the two boats are corrected again for the difference in number of laps, i.e., CT-H16 x 3/2 laps vs. CT-N20?

HI Les

Yes, Sailwave implements this and I have used it for one race. It made a lot of sense... If the wind drops or builds during the race, the entire fleet is experiencing it.

You also get to restart the fleet promptly. You won't have to wait 15 minutes for the Hobie 16 to correct out on the Nacra 20.

Hi Mark,

I didn't know that option is available in Sailwave. Our club uses it now and it is a significant improvement over previous methods for scoring the Portsmouth fleet. It seems to make sense and the fact that all boats experienced roughly the same winds would seem more fair. The N20 would have more opportunity to make mistakes (more mark roundings, tacks and gybes) while the H16 gets each mistake multiplied by the distance factor (3/2 in the example). It all works out in the end, I guess.

Wouter, here’s a little

maths

analogy for you to calculate that may shed some light on just one “small” area that makes one boat faster around any course, (or a distance race for that matter).
If one sailor completes each of his tacks consistently in the order of 5 seconds faster than a competitor (which is a very small difference in reality) over the duration of a race and does even better on his jibes, say 7 seconds, (which usually means that the faster sailor will also gain time as well on his acceleration out of the tacks and jibes and he will lose less speed going into them, but we won’t include a theoretical figure for that) how many tacks and jibes would he have to make over a given time (you pick a “race” time) to give him a 2.5% advantage for the duration of the race? (Disregarding any other variables between the two).

That is called differences in sailing skill and that is not something that a rating system should correct.

And yes even old boardless boats can make quick tacks with the right handling. And doing a gibe on a spinnaker boat is not quicker then a gibe and a spinnakerless boat. Stuff like that make it all come out in the end anyway.

Wouter

But many sailors Wouter, seem to

think

that any

anomalies

in corrected time results are always somehow down to

the conditions

or

the rating/handicap

, when in the vast majority of cases it all boils down to

the little things

such as difference in times taken tacking, Jibing, setting the sails to their optimum after any boat adjustment etc, etc. If they would only take the time to see just how much difference a small amount of time taken for each tack and jibe (together with the other more obvious factors) actually makes to their overall time around a course, then they may be a little more “tolerant” towards the ratings and conditions and not quite so ready to “blame” things other than their sailing skills reality?

I think so too.

Wouter

The major problem with all handicapping processes is, that none of them make allowance for sailing ability.

So you are saying that those with less skill should win? So If you use numbers to remove the differences in the physical properties of the boats and then use numbers to remove the difference in skill of the sailors, is it really racing or can it now be classified gambling? (since it's all up to chance)

Because we depend on the wind, I think

luck

plays an enormous part in sailing. Possibly the best part.

The very best sailors have an uncanny knack of maximizing their good fortune and minimizing, even avoiding, bad fortune.

For instance, how often do top sailors get caught in

holes

compared to the rest of us?

Luck

is created by a lack of skill or knowledge of the situation. Contrary to the popular saying, I would rather be good than lucky because I can reproduce

good

sailing.

Jake

No quite the opposite although most human activity is a gamble to some extent. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

No, any rating system (handicap) can only be based on past performances as its primary indicator (that's all there is). In my case, I race an F14 against a fleet of different class boats. Because I win regularly my handicap continues to be adjusted, as it should, to compensate for the boat's ability. At some stage in the future though, the boat will be rating evenly against the rest of the fleet and will probably not win more than it's even share of races and I'm OK with that though the problem is, when I raced on those other class boats I was almost unbeatable but now it's the boat which is seen to be winning and not the skipper. As a result, eventually the boat will probably be handicapped out of contention.

I guess that over time, with the diversity of ability amongst sailors racing in any one class, the results would even out but in the meanwhile anyone contemplating racing an F14 for example, would find it hard to win in a mixed fleet and the same goes for a lot of classes. Once the top sailors have set the benchmark, it's difficult for that class to win in mixed fleet racing.

Maybe, if the results of the top sailors in any given class were not included in historic data it would be more equitable.

Berny, I'm not entirely certain that I follow your line of thinking...but I think we're reduced to a debate about

golf

handicaping a fleet. I use the term

golf

because it's how lower level golf competitions are run - with handicaps that reflect a users actualy ability. This system is much more inviting to new inducties because someone that shoots in the 120s can compete with someone in the 90s. Weekend league bowling uses the same type of system. Because of the neature of the system, it favors those that are improving - which is nice for bringing new folks into the sport. However, racing under such a system is a poor test of skill. I re-read your post again and I think we may not be talking about the same thing.

Obviously you have not much experience with measurement based systems like Texel Handicap.

Wouter