Older boats you could win a club event with

michael_w said:
From the owner's manual that came with my Albin Ballad.

'To do well in yacht racing you have to do two things; sail the boat as fast as possible over the shortest possible course.'
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Top tip.

Reminds me of Alex Ferguson’s advice when Chris Coleman asked him how to succeed in football management.

“Keep winning matches, son”.
 
MisterBaxter said:
Surely if you want to win handicap races it's about buying any boat you fancy, getting a really good set of sails, obsessively fairing and buffing the bottom, recruiting a keen crew and training hard, then turning up at every single race of the series?
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Sadly no....

Every measurement system typeforms to some extent. So for example you could recruit the entire INEOS crew, with a bunch of new sails and the cleanest bottom ever, but you wouldn't stand much chance of winning a ww/lw IRC regatta in a Pogo 1250.

That's not actually a bad thing btw... You don't win regattas by banging the corner in every race, and that applies to design as much as tactics.
 
There was a keen club sailor back 1980-ish who got a fairly nondescript boat. I don't remember exactly what it was, something between a Leisure 23 and a Jaguar 25, but he started to win a lot of races. It turned out that he scrubbed every week, something not available to many of us, and some of us thought this unfair, which of course it wasn't. It matches a saying in advice given in a very old book I once owned about yacht racing - "Luck comes to those who deserve it".

In club racing there are many factors to take into account, such as crew ability, but my advice is to be as erratic as possible. For many years we were consistently one third way down the fleet, never winning anything, but never doing badly, while there were some boats that would come last one week and then win the next, with their new handicap of course, not that this was deliberate, I hope.
 
You can win the odd event on handicap with a boat that's different from the opposition, it might do well if the course or weather favours it.
You will have much better racing sailing a boat comparable to the competition.
If your club fleet is 1980's cruiser racers, then a good 1975-1995 cruiser-racer will give you a fair chance.
If the boats are all pretty similar, then a good start, good tactics and tidal knowledge will outweigh a small performance difference.
If one boat has a small conventional kite while another is planing with an asy, it's not a worthwhile race.

You can have the best club racing in old boats ranging from XODs through Etchells to J24s.
 
B27 said:
You can win the odd event on handicap with a boat that's different from the opposition, it might do well if the course or weather favours it.
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Thats the truth with handicap racing. Decades ago my late father had his only race win in a Silhouette on a club passage race on the river Tay. There was no wind for the first few hours, so the entire fleet drifted at the same speed with the tide. We even managed to hit a small navigation mark stern to, drifting backwards. Eventually a bit of wind filled in to allow us to cross the finishing line.
On Portsmouth Handicap the slowest boat in the fleet clearly won easily. 😀
 
dunedin said:
Thats the truth with handicap racing. Decades ago my late father had his only race win in a Silhouette on a club passage race on the river Tay. There was no wind for the first few hours, so the entire fleet drifted at the same speed with the tide. We even managed to hit a small navigation mark stern to, drifting backwards. Eventually a bit of wind filled in to allow us to cross the finishing line.
On Portsmouth Handicap the slowest boat in the fleet clearly won easily. 😀
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We used to race in the Blackwater, where the course was usually +/- fifteen miles down-tide and commonly downwind, followed by fifteen miles back, also down-tide but against the wind. Generally all the boats arrived at the downwind mark at about the same time and the faster boats had a great struggle to sail to their handicap for the remaining half.
 
PeterV said:
I have a GK 29 and estimate it’s about the same speed as a Fulmar, although I would imagine the longer waterline length of a Fulmar would give it an advantage in some conditions.
however this whole discussion is pretty irrelevant, if it’s a handicap event the winner will be the boat that’s sailed best compared with its handicap, and how fast or slow it is in relation to other boats is completely irrelevant.
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That assumes the assigned handicap is correct.
What you want is a boat with an assigned handicap that is wrong in your favour, i.e treats it as a slow boat but it is in fact pretty quick.
 
Maybe the tactic would be to find a design that's very rarely race-optimised, so that the handicap is largely influenced by cruisers. Then turn it into a racing machine...
 
It doesn’t matter if the handicap is correct or not, it’s still the boat that sails the best compared with its handicap that wins. And yes, if the handicap assumes the boat is slower than it really is then it’s easier to do. And, as in dinghy racing, the boats that are raced by the very best will have the most difficult handicaps. ( I race a Finn!)
 
flaming said:
This thread is proving the main truth….

In handicap racing, the winner is not the one who picks up the prize, it’s the one with the best excuse as to why it wasn’t them…
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The real winners are those who enjoy the race, even if they come nowhere.

I wonder what some people really get out of spending thousands to win club races.
Even at dinghy level ,there are people spending a lot of cash but rarely or never venturing outside their comfort zone where they expect to win.
 
Don’t try it in a multihull. The ideal handicap boat is in the slowest 25% of the fleet, all your mistakes and sail handling cock ups are handicapped too. And those jobs tend to be easier on slower boats. At our club we’re about as welcome as a fart in a lift anyway, we are graciously allowed to enter a few races a year, often the sailing instructions expressly forbid us.
 
flaming said:
This thread is proving the main truth….

In handicap racing, the winner is not the one who picks up the prize, it’s the one with the best excuse as to why it wasn’t them…
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For many, in less cruising friendly areas ie long distances to next port / anchorage, club racing gives a 'purpose ' to go out and sail.
They race their cruising boats with cruising sails, using the National Handicap for Cruisers their handicaps are electronically tweaked over their first season to reflect the performance of their boat ie fin / bilge keels, condition of sails and amount of cruising clobber on board, this gives everyone a chance to win if they sail the shortest distance and to their boats maximum potential. It becomes socially competitive with friendly disection once ashore.
In my experience these people race in order to sail, the others who sail in order to race can be cheque book sailors where winning is everything.
Each to their own, there is a place for all. I am the former, competitive, to a point, when racing. I want the boat to sail to potential, but on a longer leg, we are more likely to be sat comfortably on the Lee cockpit bench with a coffee and sarnie than on the windward rail.
I would, however, state I feel racing improves the navigation (tidal awareness etc), sail trim and boat handling of all participants. Many cruisers claim speed is irrelevant but if by correct adjustments of sail trim I can eek another 0.5 knot I can reduce a 45 Mile passage by 1 hour, the difference between hitting and missing a tidal gate.
 
SaltyC said:
For many, in less cruising friendly areas ie long distances to next port / anchorage, club racing gives a 'purpose ' to go out and sail.
They race their cruising boats with cruising sails, using the National Handicap for Cruisers their handicaps are electronically tweaked over their first season to reflect the performance of their boat ie fin / bilge keels, condition of sails and amount of cruising clobber on board, this gives everyone a chance to win if they sail the shortest distance and to their boats maximum potential. It becomes socially competitive with friendly disection once ashore.
In my experience these people race in order to sail, the others who sail in order to race can be cheque book sailors where winning is everything.
Each to their own, there is a place for all. I am the former, competitive, to a point, when racing. I want the boat to sail to potential, but on a longer leg, we are more likely to be sat comfortably on the Lee cockpit bench with a coffee and sarnie than on the windward rail.
I would, however, state I feel racing improves the navigation (tidal awareness etc), sail trim and boat handling of all participants. Many cruisers claim speed is irrelevant but if by correct adjustments of sail trim I can eek another 0.5 knot I can reduce a 45 Mile passage by 1 hour, the difference between hitting and missing a tidal gate.
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Oh I agree entirely!

My post was a lighthearted joke at the tendency of those who did not win to re-sail the race in the bar afterwards, explaining how they would actually have been the winners if only the ratings were correct, or they had this sail etc.
A habit I am not immune to!
 
flaming said:
Oh I agree entirely!

My post was a lighthearted joke at the tendency of those who did not win to re-sail the race in the bar afterwards, explaining how they would actually have been the winners if only the ratings were correct, or they had this sail etc.
A habit I am not immune to!
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The only difference in one design fleets is that you blame the vagaries of the wind, rather than the vagaries of the rating system.
 
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