RYA National Handicap Cruisers

[flaming]

The actual race result does not really measure your performance, your position may be the result of some one else being better or worse than normal or perhaps even the last time. Rolling handicap systems take this variability out

The actual race result does not really measure your performance? Are you aware of how crazy that sounds? What other measure is there than where you finish in a race? All the "golf" handicapping systems do is tell me whether I beat them by more than last week. Which I could do by looking at the times....

They're just a fudge to make even the worst sailor eventually have a good result in the hope that this will encourage them to keep playing. And there's nothing wrong with that in itself, but don't fool yourself that they're actually providing real results.

 

[H4B]

The actual race result does not really measure your performance? Are you aware of how crazy that sounds? What other measure is there than where you finish in a race? All the "golf" handicapping systems do is tell me whether I beat them by more than last week. Which I could do by looking at the times....

They're just a fudge to make even the worst sailor eventually have a good result in the hope that this will encourage them to keep playing. And there's nothing wrong with that in itself, but don't fool yourself that they're actually providing real results.

I am not alone in my thoughts then.

 

[mrming]

As has been said before, there are two ways out of this for fleets who are dissatisfied with NHC.

1) Roll your own - a locally administered system run by someone who knows the boats and can set fair numbers, adjusted each season based on any modifications etc. Pros: cheaper for the sailors, relatively fair if run well. Cons: A lot of admin for someone, potentially subject to local politics (the extreme example of this being the US PHRF system).

2) IRC. Pros: as fair as it's going to realistically get, cuts down on admin at the club. Cons: the expense, the cost and hassle of measuring non-standard boats, another barrier to stop people going racing.

In our class of small cruiser racers it looks like we're going to go IRC and also continue to score on NHC so as not to exclude anyone that doesn't want the hassle. My particular model of boat has never been rated on IRC before and the manufacturer's published weight doesn't seem to include the keel, so it may be that in order to get a fair rating I'm going to have to get an endorsed cert, raising the cost of IRC by hundreds of pounds. For a 21' boat this seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

 

[maxi77]

The actual race result does not really measure your performance? Are you aware of how crazy that sounds? What other measure is there than where you finish in a race? All the "golf" handicapping systems do is tell me whether I beat them by more than last week. Which I could do by looking at the times....

They're just a fudge to make even the worst sailor eventually have a good result in the hope that this will encourage them to keep playing. And there's nothing wrong with that in itself, but don't fool yourself that they're actually providing real results.

Sorry but if you compare your result with that of boat B in any race it will not tell you that you have done better in that race (or worse if that is the case) because your improved result could be due to boat B being sailed worse in that event. With a rolling handicap system it does try to measure absolute performance and thus tell you whether it was your performance that gained you the result or boat Bs poor performance. A rolling handicap system should show a trend of improving, falling or static performance over a few races independent of the performance of others thus giving a boat and it's crew real information on their performance

 

[flaming]

Sorry but if you compare your result with that of boat B in any race it will not tell you that you have done better in that race (or worse if that is the case) because your improved result could be due to boat B being sailed worse in that event. With a rolling handicap system it does try to measure absolute performance and thus tell you whether it was your performance that gained you the result or boat Bs poor performance. A rolling handicap system should show a trend of improving, falling or static performance over a few races independent of the performance of others thus giving a boat and it's crew real information on their performance

That makes no sense at all. How can any results system give me absolute performance data when all it's measuring is relative data to other boats? If all the other boats have a shocker and I don't this would show up exactly the same as if I sailed a blinder. Looking at an OD series results (or measurement handicap results) quickly shows you which races you did well in, because you're closer to the front of the fleet! There's an old saying that you can only beat the boats that turn up!

I've been sailing against some boats for years, I know how our performance has changed relative to them, because I know how close it used to be compared to now. The only way to find out how your performance has changed in any measure than against your own fleet is to race against other boats.

 

[lw395]

Sorry but if you compare your result with that of boat B in any race it will not tell you that you have done better in that race (or worse if that is the case) because your improved result could be due to boat B being sailed worse in that event. With a rolling handicap system it does try to measure absolute performance and thus tell you whether it was your performance that gained you the result or boat Bs poor performance. A rolling handicap system should show a trend of improving, falling or static performance over a few races independent of the performance of others thus giving a boat and it's crew real information on their performance

I think it would need a lot of races to make any sense, when you take out the random elements and the weather.
I think the message is fairly clear, if you want to take the results seriously, IRC or One Design is the way to go.
But we should respect that not everybody does want to take the results seriously.

 

[awol]

Having raced under the rolling handicap system at the club that maxi77 has mentioned, I can only endorse his view. Results for an individual race can be, and often are, affected by extraneous events though it is true that the better the sailors, the more often they seem to benefit. Out of the software used also comes a graph of a boat's individual performance against its base handicap and it is simple to see a trend in amongst the variations. The rolling handicap calculations exclude results with >5% change as anomalous.

For a handicap fleet with a mixture of light and heavy wind performers, a tidal flow that always penalises the slower boats, a tendency for the wind to drop as the race goes on and, of course, a range of racing laminates to baggy dacrons, it makes for racing that keeps everyone in with a competitive chance. The series winners tend to be the better boats and crews through consistency but no-one is left as the perennial tale-end-charlie of the results, even though that is where they are on the water. It seems to work a lot better than a fixed handicap system like CYCA and stops the acrimony generated with the perceived handicap bandits.

Of course, if you are really serious about your racing, a strict OD fleet is the only way to go - and if you are serious about winning, a class where money spend gives an advantage in boat design, equipment and crew ability could be your niche. But if you just want to sail your cruising boat round-the-cans for friendly competition and post-race banter, a rolling handicap system makes a great deal of sense. Whether the NHC system with some very strange base numbers and its rapid changes is fit for purpose is another question.

 

[flaming]

Having raced under the rolling handicap system at the club that maxi77 has mentioned, I can only endorse his view. Results for an individual race can be, and often are, affected by extraneous events though it is true that the better the sailors, the more often they seem to benefit. Out of the software used also comes a graph of a boat's individual performance against its base handicap and it is simple to see a trend in amongst the variations. The rolling handicap calculations exclude results with >5% change as anomalous.

That's still only relative to the competition though, no reason why you couldn't extract that data from a similar set of results under IRC if you so desired. Or even OD results.

 

[awol]

That's still only relative to the competition though, no reason why you couldn't extract that data from a similar set of results under IRC if you so desired. Or even OD results.

Absolutely! Or you could look on it like golf where you play the course as well as compete against other players with the par score being derived from all the rest of the competitors. As in golf you can get a win-win with a gradual reduction in handicap and victories over other boats.