Handicap systems

[SteveA]

Having changed from the PY system to NHC 2 years ago our club members are getting very disillusioned with this new system which appears to work against the better and more frequent sailors.
This is 'fun' racing each weekend of all sorts of cruising boats where no one would be interested in going down the IRC route.
I would be very interested to know what other systems are used at other clubs if not IRC or NHC.

 

[Judders]

NHC is designed to fail. Like so much of what the RYA does. Our local clubs have all brought back their own handicap systems.

 

[lw395]

Some clubs seem to compromise and dual-score. NHC recognises improvers, PY/IRC/local rating recognises the best sailed boats.

The other option is to just enjoy it on the water and don't worry what the spreadsheet says.

 

[lpdsn]

Having changed from the PY system to NHC 2 years ago our club members are getting very disillusioned with this new system which appears to work against the better and more frequent sailors.

A surprisingly common trick to manage the equivalent ECHO handicap before a big regatta is to not race. I can never understand why someone would try to cheat at ECHO - as if there is something to be gained by being the best amongst those that aren't good enough to be competetive under IRC.

 

[roblpm]

Well we just won our first ever race last night so I like our system....!!

 

[lpdsn]

Well done. That gives you a message that you're improving. You have to keep improving to repeat it in other races.

 

[roblpm]

Well done. That gives you a message that you're improving. You have to keep improving to repeat it in other races.

Thanks. Yes I can't really get my head round the way it all works.... We get better, we need to do better....?! Whats the point as we didn't really win.........

I should look at the maths. I think we are on a modified py system.

 

[bobgarrett]

Have a look at VPRS. www.vprs.org.

 

[Racecruiser]

Why not just go IRC? Chances are the RORC Rating office will have standard hull data for whoever wants to enter your races then all that has to be done is measure sails which can be self-measured and is fairly easily done according to the instructions in the IRC book. That will get you an unendorsed rating, no professional measuring or weighing required.

Of course an endorsed rating does involve the complication and expense of stripping the boat for weighing and professional measurement of hulls and sails but it sounds like that can be filed in the pending tray! For example the understanding in JOG is that you should get endorsed after a while and after some good results.

 

[wotayottie]

Having changed from the PY system to NHC 2 years ago our club members are getting very disillusioned with this new system which appears to work against the better and more frequent sailors.
This is 'fun' racing each weekend of all sorts of cruising boats where no one would be interested in going down the IRC route.
I would be very interested to know what other systems are used at other clubs if not IRC or NHC.

Quite a few seem to have gone back to the old PY numbers they understood, not least because many clubs never ran PY properly ( ie making adjustments after a race) so it was operated as a sort of faux IRC. It must also be said that PY allowed initial adjustments for things like keels and no spinny and folding props whereas NHC simply relies on adjustments race to race.

Again some clubs arent using NHC correctly - different fleets on different days , say the midweek fleet and the sunday race fleet, should have different handicaps for the same boat. That seems to go against the grain.

When NHC was brought out I sat down for a cup of tea at a table that had most of our regular racers on it. Every single one of them was convinced that their boat was at a disadvantage under the new system. None of them could ever win a race under NHC.

We run NHC using Hal at out club and it works well. Better than IRC where every race is won by the same boat who happens to have a very good rating but is last over the line. But you are of course free to run whatever handicap you like.

One final point. The big advantage of NHC and hal is that there is no discretion, no committee or race officer to be harangued over your handicap or adjustment.

 

[wotayottie]

Why not just go IRC? Chances are the RORC Rating office will have standard hull data for whoever wants to enter your races then all that has to be done is measure sails which can be self-measured and is fairly easily done according to the instructions in the IRC book. That will get you an unendorsed rating, no professional measuring or weighing required.

.

Cost. Its £70 I believe, every year. To a casual family racer, thats too much. No need anyway when you can use Byron or PY or even NHC numbers and simply not do the after race adjustment. All FOC.

 

[mrming]

I help organise the cruiser racing at our local club. We dual score on IRC and NHC.

We want to encourage people who don't race regularly to come out more often, but NHC is a series based system which only makes it's effects known in the longer term as handicaps adjust.

People come out for a race on their base number, get beaten by the regular, practiced boats, and then claim the system is unfair as they had no chance of winning the race. NHC rewards participation in theory, but in practice (for us), it doesn't necessarily encourage it in the first place.

We've also had a problem with the (RYA recommended) dual scoring across IRC and NHC. Quite often the same boats have shared the podium in each system, meaning the IRC boats get two lots of prizes and the NHC boats get none. We've had to start giving prizes for 1st, 2nd & 3rd NHC boats to mitigate that one.

There's no easy answer for handicap racing at club level, but NHC is loved by no one at our club. I don't think it's the cost of the IRC cert that puts people off per-se, but more the admin associated with it. There is a lot of confusion about endorsed vs non-endorsed, and people seem to think it's more work than it really is to get a cert.

 

[MissFitz]

There's no easy answer for handicap racing at club level, but NHC is loved by no one at our club. I don't think it's the cost of the IRC cert that puts people off per-se, but more the admin associated with it. There is a lot of confusion about endorsed vs non-endorsed, and people seem to think it's more work than it really is to get a cert.

I definitely thought getting IRC certified was a lot more complicated than it is. I thought I'd need to get weighed, measure the sails etc. Turned out all I had to do was say 'I've got a Sonata' & give RORC £70. Obviously easier for a well-known class but still......

 

[mrming]

I definitely thought getting IRC certified was a lot more complicated than it is. I thought I'd need to get weighed, measure the sails etc. Turned out all I had to do was say 'I've got a Sonata' & give RORC £70. Obviously easier for a well-known class but still......

My boat wasn't on the list for standard hull data but even then it wasn't difficult. I had to supply a few simple hull and rig measurements and ask my sailmaker to pass on the sail measurements. For the majority of production boats they should only have to supply the sail measurements as RORC already has the hull and rig data.

 

[flaming]

Why not just go IRC? Chances are the RORC Rating office will have standard hull data for whoever wants to enter your races then all that has to be done is measure sails which can be self-measured and is fairly easily done according to the instructions in the IRC book. That will get you an unendorsed rating, no professional measuring or weighing required.

Of course an endorsed rating does involve the complication and expense of stripping the boat for weighing and professional measurement of hulls and sails but it sounds like that can be filed in the pending tray! For example the understanding in JOG is that you should get endorsed after a while and after some good results.

Incorrect. You can have an endorsed rating without weighing. Endorsed just means that an official measurer has to measure the boat rather than relying on owner inputted data. Weighing is the exception as design weight can be used for an endorsed rating.

 

[wotayottie]

My boat wasn't on the list for standard hull data but even then it wasn't difficult. I had to supply a few simple hull and rig measurements and ask my sailmaker to pass on the sail measurements. For the majority of production boats they should only have to supply the sail measurements as RORC already has the hull and rig data.

The irony is that the base NHC handicaps and the Byron ones are both calculated from hull and rig data. When NHC was introduced I was told by the RYA that the calculation had been done in cooperation with RORC and using a simplified version of the IRC calculation. One of the issues, however, is that data for many of the older type boats raced under NHC isnt reliable.

 

[wotayottie]

My boat wasn't on the list for standard hull data but even then it wasn't difficult. I had to supply a few simple hull and rig measurements and ask my sailmaker to pass on the sail measurements. For the majority of production boats they should only have to supply the sail measurements as RORC already has the hull and rig data.

The irony is that the base NHC handicaps and the Byron ones are both calculated from hull and rig data. When NHC was introduced I was told by the RYA that the calculation had been done in cooperation with RORC and using a simplified version of the IRC calculation. One of the issues, however, is that data for many of the older type boats raced under NHC isnt reliable.

Nevertheless for my own boat as an example the IRC is .944 and the NHC is .935 a difference of slightly less than 1 %. . To give other examples with IRC first and NHC second. the sigma 33 is .914/.909, 31.7 is .96 / .963 and elan 333 is .977 .974. Numbers taken from the RYA NHC list and a set of past RTI race entry list for IRC. None of these differences is greater than half of one percent but oddly there is a bigger difference on the J109 which is .989 on NHC and 1.02 on IRC. Is there an OD version and a cruising version of this boat?

 

[flaming]

oddly there is a bigger difference on the J109 which is .989 on NHC and 1.02 on IRC. Is there an OD version and a cruising version of this boat?

The OD 109 is about 1.020 on IRC, but most 109s lose the genoa when sailing under IRC, and I've seen ratings from 1.014 to 1.004 for boats sailing with 100% jibs. 0.989 under NHC seems very low compared to some of those other numbers.

 

[Triassic]

There's never going to be the perfect solution to ratings when it comes to mixed fleets, or even very similar designs for that matter, unless it is based on the known performance of that particular vessel and even that can vary according to conditions. In my case I happen to have a particularly large square top main and I pay heavily for this on my MOCRA rating. It is fair to say that I do seem to have an advantage in very light winds against otherwise identical boats however as soon as the breeze picks up I'm always the first to reef and even if I do manage to hold onto full sail I'm nowhere near as competitive to windward. This may all be down to the square top.... or it might just be that my sails aren't made of a fancy laminate and their somewhat baggy shape are better suited to light winds........

We did a mixed fleet regatta recently which used the Byron system, and we completely cleaned up despite not sailing particularly well in one of the races. Interestingly one of the other skippers in the regatta was my clubs regular race officer and when he ran the times for each race on his own rating figures the result was much more reflective of how we had actually sailed. I guess the point that I am trying to make is for a club racing scene to be effective the race officer needs to be able to tweak individual ratings to reflect the complete package and how it performs in the real world rather than just what it says in theory.

 

[Racecruiser]

Incorrect. You can have an endorsed rating without weighing. Endorsed just means that an official measurer has to measure the boat rather than relying on owner inputted data. Weighing is the exception as design weight can be used for an endorsed rating.

You've made me consult my IRC Yearbook 2017 and page 34 has a table Acceptable Sources of Data for weight and other factors covering Endorsed and Standard certificates. May be useful for anyone interested also FAQs on Page 35.

And here's a link to the yearbook: http://content.yudu.com/web/fiqy/0A2vpt2/IRCYearbook2017/flash/resources/index.htm

As others have been saying getting an IRC Rating doesn't have to be difficult or unduly expensive.