UK-Cherub Forum
Cherub Chat => Sailing Stories => Topic started by: scorpion_1925 on December 03, 2018, 08:25:23 PM
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Following the Draycote Dash, where no one can deny that Green Bananas and King Tubby had a lot of fun, the issue of handicaps at open handicap events arose. it soon became quite clear that there was quite a big gulf between 05 rules boats and 97 rules boats, and as such a massive handicap penalty for the 97 rules boats to sail off the 05 rules handicap.
I have done a little digging and been in touch with both the Portsmouth Yardstick, who have so far failed to reply, and the Great lakes who have been most helpful. after a little bit of back and forth by email they have said it would be more than likely be possible for our handicap situation to be looked at. they have sited a couple of other classes where the situation exists for two different designs but both the same class exist.
International moths - if a foiler turns up then the lowriders sail off the foiling handicap, if no foilers they use the last lowrider handicap
national 18 - boats to the classic rules rather than the latest carry a letter C on their sails to signify to the race officer that they are a classic design.
international 14 - they didn't actually say how they distinguish between the two but did say that they do something similar for them.
so my question to you on the here, and maybe the committee (not sure if its something you would want to discuss or not), is this a route that we would want to go down? would it encourage more 97 rules boats to take part in open handicap events?
i will continue to pursue the portsmouth yardstick people and see if i can get any sort of a dialogue going with them. in the meantime, please let me know your thoughts so that i can feedback to the Great Lakes.
if anyone wants to read the full dialogue i can forward the emails to you.
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For the club sailing at Largs we recognise older handicaps for older 14's and lowrider moths, and we also had a different one for an older Fireball and Merlin that sailed here. When I was sailing Pocket Rocket in 97 rules mode we also used the handicap from the 2005 when the rules changed. There is a list here:http://www.uk-cherub.org/doku.php/tech/handicaps (http://www.uk-cherub.org/doku.php/tech/handicaps)
Once we started doing the online handicap returns at Largs it was easy to calculate the handicap that we were sailing Pocket Rocket it was getting quicker each year and got down to 910 at the end of 2017. That was with 97 rules upwind and a 19sqm kite and T-foil. PR is also a hull built to the 97 hull rule rather than converted and there is quite a speed benefit from that, it is also often windy here which helps.
Jim C who sometimes posts on here has alot of knowledge about handicaps and would be a good person to contact.
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At club level it isn't such an issue, most clubs are happy to be guided by what's on the website. The problem occurs at big open handicap events, like the sail juice events. This is what prompted the enquiry to find out what would be necessary to get something officially recognised for these type of events.
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I would be suprised if you got anything from the RYA, they won't be able to pull results out for 97 rules boats as there is a mix of modified and unmodified boats through the sailnumber range.
Sailjuce seem to be open to doing their own handicaps, and have been talking of dynamic handicaping. S0 potentally giving them some defining charitoristics and seed data may be sufficient. If your club submits data to the PY website you can get a pdf showing the handicap range of competing boats in a class. Potentially if you got a few of those from different 97 rules boats that have been club racing you might be able to start the conversation.
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Following the Grafham grand prix, where we had a lot of fun blasting around, I was able to get hold of the results so that I could rework them for py's of 975 and 1000 just to see what effect this would have had on our results. and whilst the individual race results were only a small improvement this would have lifted out overall result from last to finish all the race to near the middle of the fleet. I have attached the calculations for those that are interested.
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Would have been interesting to see what our actual results should have looked like if they didn’t change our py after racing
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After a little arithmatic your results would have been 7, 3, 1 which would have placed you second overall
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If you want an unofficial dialogue with the RYA Portsmouth yardstick group all you have to do is talk to me. Without breaching meeting confidentiality I think I can say that the 97 rules/05 rules issue is something that has been discussed. Its a problem with a considerable number of classes - consider how many variations of Fevas and Picos there are...
Unlike Great Lakes the RYA group does not make up handicaps on limited evidence, everything has to be data based. Make sure that your club is making a return using the PY online system, and make sure that 97 rules boats are labelled as such, and make sure you do lots of races. Then if there's sufficient data of a quality for a reasonable number it will get published.
Jim C
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A little further progress has been made with this.
Great Lakes - they are more than happy to give the 97 rules boats a separate handicap listing, although a number hasn't been set it will be between 1000 and 975. the only stipulation is that for handicap events we carry an identifying mark on our sails so the race officer can distinguish us from the newer boats. I propose a line beneath the heart, probably the simplest method.
RYA PY - having eventually had conversation with them, they did agree that something could be done, however they weren't willing to just reintroduce the number that existed back in 2005, which was my suggestion. what they have asked is that clubs where 97 rules cherubs are sailed submit data in their results returns, it needs to be clearly indicated that it is a 97 rules cherub so that they can extract the data from the current cherub data and hopefully next year we may get a handicap listing on the main PY list.
so this is an update on the current situation, so what we need to do is toget racing, and to make sure that results are recorded as 97 rules.
the great lakes have actually published on their website that they are in talks with a few classes about handicaps, including the cherub class.
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I know the guys behind the GL handicaps really well so I can push for a 97 rules h'cap and I think they will listen. A line under seems easy to see. They also set the club h'caps at QM - don't get me started on how they treat the RS200 v's laser (basically widening the gap year on year to try and stop us beating the vocal laser fleet) I think in 2019 they will succeed.
I'm afraid they are going to spank a foiler and I won't get any traction in arguing that one. In fact the Bloody Mary has banned foilers just for practical reasons of trying to track them as there is such a difference between foiling/non=foiling modes it can be hard to tell if a moth is in the lead or being lapped unless you have been eyes on pretty much all the time or know the class/sailors really well which your average volunteer at the BM doesn't.
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Cheers Andy, all help and opinions greatly received
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It might be good if they could explain why A+Es handicap was changed after racing.
This seems particularly harsh as they had not even won.
It is not unreasonable to change it if a boat wins but to decide that their handicap should be changed to stop them winning after the race is pretty rough.
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It's not a change made by the great lakes, that was a change made by grafham water themselves to the best of my knowledge
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It is not unreasonable to change it if a boat wins but to decide that their handicap should be changed to stop them winning after the race is pretty rough.
If the RC had screwed up and given a boat the wrong handicap it would be reasonable to correct it. That's a scoring error, and scoring errors should always be corrected.
If the RC were misinformed about a boats configuration it might be reasonable too.
As an example when my club gives 'old boat' handicaps we have a policy that significant upgrades (eg plastic masts on tin mast era boats) mean the boat gets the current handicap. If a crew didn't know that and didn't inform the RC then a post race handicap change would also be reasonable.
OTOH altering the handicap simply because they won does indeed seem more than a little harsh unless there was something in the SIs about retrospective handicaps (and even then...)
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The boat had not won but it had done quite well.
It is a measured current rules Cherub, with foils.
It clearly has potential but has not actually won any events.
It seems wrong that they are penalised on their perceived potential rather than historic results like everyone else. Especially when those making the adjustment probably know little about its actual potential.
If it wins repeatedly or by a large margin it would be reasonable to either adjust the Cherub PY or give it a special one. Though it is not normal to adjust after a single win.
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Long story short i was not pleased when it all happened but hey
lets be honest it was always going to be a tad controversial to some so when we registered i went up to the race office and specifically asked if it would be a problem, they said no and just go race
when we got off the water we were called to the race office and told that what we had done was unfair to the competition and there was nothing we could do about it, they were changing our handicap, we decided it wasnt worth the fight.
my personal oppinion on the matter is they violated both the rrs and their own S.I's to do this but they made it pretty clear our oppinion didnt matter
Alex
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You are right Alex.
The best response it so show them that you have the best boat on the planet.
They know this which is why they are scared of the class.
We had extraordinary bias against us both before and after foiling. (PY 760 at Hayling without foils).
Pick your day and you should be able to beat them all on the water.
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Its tricky though Clive.
On the one hand I am no fan of the Great Lakes tendency for people in smoke filled rooms to decide what they think handicaps ought to be.
On the other hand, whether they measure to class rules or not, its clearly inappropriate to use a handicap developed from data for non foiling boats for foil equipped boats. Whether the foiling implementation is a success, partial success or failure the chances that a "correct" handicap for a foiling boat will turn out to be the same as that for a non foiling boat is pretty much zero.
With hindsight, in my opinion we made a major error with Portsmouth Yardstick in not splitting off foam sandwich/carbon spars from wood/grp and tin rig boats. Our predecessors got it right when they split out cotton and terylene sails. To my utter astonishment I have data I have comfortably confident in that suggests that wood Solos are around 5% slower on elapsed time in a race than foam sandwich ones. It would be an even bigger error not to split off foil boats from lowriders.
You've got to say, then, that an RC should consider the yardstick number for a foiling boat to be a trial number, and that's really a finger in the air exercise. If you take the same principle as redress then an RC has a duty to make the racing as fair for as many competitors as possible. It is not reasonable to refuse entries from boats that have trial numbers. How are you going to get numbers if you don't allow them to compete? It could be argued though that its not unreasonable to say that such boats aren't eligible for trophies, or that their handicaps may be adjust post race PROVIDED ALL THAT IS MADE CLEAR IN THE NOR.
That brings me on to another feature of PY calculation as it relates to boats with binary performance like the Cherub or anything with foils. The Portsmouth Yardstick calculation discards from consideration any result that doesn't get up to a reasonable percentage of the winners corrected time. The original plan behind that was to exclude raw beginners, boats that missed the tide gate, boats that spent half the race upside down etc. However what is also does, for boats with extreme performance, is to exclude results where the conditions plain don't suit the boat. So British Moth results in breeze don't contribute to the number, and nor do Cherub and Canoe results in drifters, or Moths in non foiling conditions. So this means that a Portsmouth Yardstick number is not an average of the performance in all conditions, its an average of the performance in conditions that reasonably suit the boat.
20 years ago I'd have said that was monstrously unfair. Now I think its probably reasonable. Consider, you, and maybe even I could design a Cherub that was a light airs flyer and pathetic in planing conditions. Call it Rebel[grin]. Could it win a championship? Only if the conditions were very extreme. If you can't expect to win a championship if you bang the R corner on every beat you can't expect to do so if you bang the corner on design. So maybe its not unreasonable that if a class has banged the corner on design its similarly disadvantaged.
As for extraordinary bias against Cherubs at Hayling. Really? Does a crab s*** in the harbour?
Disclaimer: these are purely personal opinions of Jim Champ, former Cherub, Canoe and Moth Sailor. They in no way represent the views of the RYA or the RYA Empirical Handicapping Advisory Committee.
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Folks you may have noticed that the Cherub has dropped of the PY list this year. This happens because of insufficient and/or inconsistent data. So please get out there and do races, help your clubs get a return in if needed plus make sure the boats are categorised properly. I suggest Cherub, Cherub 97 Rules and Cherub foils. But most important go sailing!
JimC (same disclaimer as above)
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to continue what could prove to be a never ending topic, I spoke to Rutland before racing this weekend and asked if we could get our race times so we could see what difference handicapping would make to results. I have attached the results worked out with a handicap just for comparison. if anyone has a suggested handicap for A&E I am happy to update them.
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By the nature of the PYS calculations they don't work for one of a kind boats. However when you know all the individual sailors involved a decent shot at a trial number can be had by looking at their results before the change/new boat/whatever and seeing where they came in the fleet, then take the post change results and calculate a number that puts them in the same sort of place in the pecking order.
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The great lakes have confirmed the handicaps as follows foiler 800, 05 rules 890, 97 rule 970
This should avoid any more problems at events like the sailjuice
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foiler 800, 05 rules 890, 97 rule 970
Are we still calling them 05 rules ? ;)
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I get your point
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They look like good numbers for all variants.
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At least now we can avoid the grafham debacle