It’s time to replace PHRF once and for all!

[Rain Man]

The problem with any change to ORC/ORR or whatever is that there will be winners and losers.  Some boats will have a less favourable rating than they did before.  Those people will quit racing their boats.  So, you can have PHRF with the current whining, or less people sailing.  Choose your poison.

 

[coyotepup]

PHRF is like Winston Churchill's quote about democracy: it's the worst system in the world except for all the other ones that have been tried.  The fact is that a huge chunk of racing is weeknight beer can racing where expensive individual measurement systems aren't worth the time, effort, or cost.

 

[Reference]

PHRF is fine... ORC is fine... ORR is fine... as long as class splits are narrow.  But no systemcan rate a melges 32 against an Alberg 30, and anyone selling that as a feature is a liar. 
 

My concern is that by splitting an already diminished fleet across three rating systems is only hurting racing.  

 

[Pollination]

Club racing needs a system that encourages local fleets to participate.  Let's see what 2021 brings. Most participation and data from 2020 should not be recognized and , in my humble opinion, not be used to change local rating systems at this time. Tap the brakes and stew over your PHRF rating..or the challenge of the implementation of ORCi or ORR and how that might play out for your results in 2021. Better get to work! 

 

[Raz'r]

Club racing needs a system that encourages local fleets to participate.  Let's see what 2021 brings. Most participation and data from 2020 should not be recognized and , in my humble opinion, not be used to change local rating systems at this time. Tap the brakes and stew over your PHRF rating..or the challenge of the implementation of ORCi or ORR and how that might play out for your results in 2021. Better get to work! 

Just got my ORR rating today. Using it for the ocean, but also as a basis for PHRF adjustment.

 

[fcfc]

ORC has its own limitations.

ALL that is not measured is subject to cheating/equipment race. Hull surface finish, sails quality...

Even , in the > 10.000 certificates , how many have MWT Mast Weight and MWG Mast center of Gravity height really measured ?

And do not forget that ORC VPP only handles two degrees of freedom : Heel angle equilibrium and resistance/propulsion. Side force balance/ leeway angle is NOT handled.

 

[badia420]

Hello! 

I am going to put an opinion from the other side of the pond...

Situation in Spain was weird for a couple of years, there was a rating called RN or RI later, which basically a formula with some of the parameters of the boat, all easy to use, open excel to make changes and tests... worked semi nice, lots of boats, the more you measure the better is your rating, or at least more accurate, but can sail without any measurement because they got extensive DataBase with basic models etc.. no VPP though, just formula.
This was all organized from the RANC, the national cruising association. Even did 3 COPA DEL REY with it.
Price was about 8€/m, so around 100€ per year.

Then it comes the RFEV, spanish sailing federation and realizes they are not getting any money about it and decides that all national championships and bla bla must be done in ORC (through them obviously).

There were several years of conflict and now its mostly ORC around Spain. Same people sailing, and if there are less people sailing is due to other reasons.

My opinion is that participation does not relate to the rating system, at least in my zone, Catalan Coast.

For modest clubs it goes with stock Club certificates and more racy people get their ORCi, but lots of people play it with the club version and they get their wins.
In Barcelona specially, for those who do not have rating or have not an updated one we take theirs or a similar boat and apply a penalty on their time (not apealable).

So far so good and demonstrates that rating should not be an obstacle for participation, BUUT having a more scientific and fair base for all it its better IMHO.

On personal side I was initially against the change from RI to ORC because it complicated things... but in the end it has been a very good move overall, and allows us to move around and use an international Rating system, and get people form around the world in the big regatas like COPA DEL REY, in inshore or several of the offshore races like 300millas a3.

So in general go for it guys!

 

[Furkolkjaaf]

Annapolis YC recently adopted ORC and their participation has increased 25% since.  ORC results are generally much tighter than PHRF so more boats have a chance to do well, hence increased participation.

As soon as they learn the game, some "rule beater ORC bandits" will appear, then participation will start to decrease. Been there done that (Italy).

 

[Frogman56]

Furko,

Lets keep the rule effectiveness separate from cheating!

The problem (in summary) with orc is that it attempts to predict everything, whereas e.g, irc assumes efficient design and tries to predict only the major factors. If irc added real measured vcg it would take a huge step forward.

 

[Frogman56]

BYW fcfc,

ORC does measure leeway.

 

[Streetwise]

US Sailing has been using VPP for National Reference Ratings for a decent number of boats. You can read about it, and see the ratings, along with all the regionally-reported ratings.

https://www.ussailing.org/competition/offshore/phrf/phrf-handicaps/

It has made life much smoother for our PHRF committee. I know that in our area, anything besides PHRF would be too expensive for all but a handful of boats. We provide PHRF for free here.

 

[European Bloke]

Furko,

Lets keep the rule effectiveness separate from cheating!

The problem (in summary) with orc is that it attempts to predict everything, whereas e.g, irc assumes efficient design and tries to predict only the major factors. If irc added real measured vcg it would take a huge step forward.

A rule beater bandit is not a cheater.

A rule beater bandit is a boat that understand the rule and implementes features that are not as slow as the rule thinks they are in the conditions they race in on the courses they use.

It may not be fun racing with those features and it may not be fun racing against boats with those features.

 

[Frogman56]

Furko referenced the infamous Italian orc cheater with disguised internal water tanks and some other nonsense, with the owners and affiliates copping long bans for their efforts.

 

[Starboard!!]

As soon as they learn the game, some "rule beater ORC bandits" will appear, then participation will start to decrease. Been there done that (Italy).

This is exactly what is happening in Annapolis...  new ORC-optimized designs like the Italia are cleaning house, winning or in top 3 in most races.  They have great crew too, which matters too of course. 

(And old phrf rule beaters are instead racing in the phrf division... which means smaller less competitive classes for both)

(Also some interesting results with older boats suddenly are outperforming orc, maybe because that vpp rule has focused more on modern design features?)

 

[TUBBY]

NO rule yet devised can rate EVERY boat fairly in all, (or even any) set of conditions.

IMS tried,  and while better than the option at the time, failed, and was thought too difficult to administer.  Also many Grand Prix sailors disliked knowing what the delta would be between boats while racing,  which meant less certainty to on board calls of how you were going.

The newer rules are aiming to provide the same unattainable outcome,  some do it better than others,  and while mostly results are similar under different rating systems,  some favour particular types of boats,  in different conditions.

In Oz it is not uncommon for boats to carry 2 or even 3 ratings under different systems and many races allow them to be scored in each division in the same race.

 

[Weasel134]

Hello! 

I am going to put an opinion from the other side of the pond...

Situation in Spain was weird for a couple of years, there was a rating called RN or RI later, which basically a formula with some of the parameters of the boat, all easy to use, open excel to make changes and tests... worked semi nice, lots of boats, the more you measure the better is your rating, or at least more accurate, but can sail without any measurement because they got extensive DataBase with basic models etc.. no VPP though, just formula.
This was all organized from the RANC, the national cruising association. Even did 3 COPA DEL REY with it.
Price was about 8€/m, so around 100€ per year.

Then it comes the RFEV, spanish sailing federation and realizes they are not getting any money about it and decides that all national championships and bla bla must be done in ORC (through them obviously).

There were several years of conflict and now its mostly ORC around Spain. Same people sailing, and if there are less people sailing is due to other reasons.

My opinion is that participation does not relate to the rating system, at least in my zone, Catalan Coast.

For modest clubs it goes with stock Club certificates and more racy people get their ORCi, but lots of people play it with the club version and they get their wins.
In Barcelona specially, for those who do not have rating or have not an updated one we take theirs or a similar boat and apply a penalty on their time (not apealable).

So far so good and demonstrates that rating should not be an obstacle for participation, BUUT having a more scientific and fair base for all it its better IMHO.

On personal side I was initially against the change from RI to ORC because it complicated things... but in the end it has been a very good move overall, and allows us to move around and use an international Rating system, and get people form around the world in the big regatas like COPA DEL REY, in inshore or several of the offshore races like 300millas a3.

So in general go for it guys!

Good feedback!  Thanks. 

 

[Swimsailor]

PHRF is bush league

Bush league?  So the vast majority of racing in the US is inferior?  Inferior to what?  Sailing is already expensive, even at the club level.  Why ask people to cough up more money?  The habitual PHRF rating whiners won't buy a new sail much less PAY for a rating.

 

[Lex Teredo]

I like ORC better than PHRF.  We had to get ORC measured this year b/c our little OD fleet was half out of the water due to COVID so they banged a bunch of local-to-Annapolis classes into ORC (rather than PHRF).  The initial measurement cost a few bucks in sailmaker time and paying for the rating of course, but it was quick and it's accurate.  Properly administered it's a better handicap system - for our waterline and as a displacement boat, a J/35 is a rocketship upwind and we get fucked in any reaching race or planing downwind race by newer ULDB with similar PHRF ratings. A J/35 that beats, say, a J/80 on a 30 mile downwind sled ride in 20+ kts is either being sailed way beyond its rating, or pounding on a J/80 that isn't well-sailed.  (I've been doing a steady 11-12 knots with lots of fun surfing and have been passed by a J/80 throwing a roostertail in mid-20's winds... not an excuse, just reality... and when we murder that boat going upwind it's just because of the displacement hull design, not because we're sailing better).  ORC gives the handicap system a better chance of being in the ballpark.  

ORR-EZ is a good system too as it's ORC-lite, and it's around as cheap as PHRF, and usually gives the *very casual* racer a nice way to get into handicap racing without $400 in loft time.  While some of them scare the bejeezus out of me on a crowded start box, I love to death the guys coming out in a Bavaria 38 and going at it.  Per a short distance race pickle dish winner a couple years ago - "we didn't even remove the china or the silverware, because the race rules told us not to."  I fuckin' love that guy.  Seriously, I hugged him when he said that.  The handle of rum I'd drunk a third of may have had something to do with it, but that's the spirit and that's how you get people to race a few times a year, and maybe think about jumping on a serious boat, or racing on J/22s or Harbor 20's or something OD when they aren't rolling out the family truckster for a Memorial Day destination race.   And just between us girls, our next boat is going to be a cruiser/racer, instead of a racer/cruiser, and it's probably going to be a weekend weapon rather than a Wednesdays plus weekend weapon.  There is a lot to be said for not taking it too seriously as the knees grow creaky, the back aches, and one starts craving fresh enchiladas for the midnight meal rather than defrosted.

That said, I'll stand by the contention that if it ain't OD, it ain't serious racing until you get into some serious long distance, multi-day races where the varying design choices average themselves out due to variable conditions.   There are challenges other than boat design and the handicap system in those races though, and we don't all have to do the identical things all the time.  That's one nice thing about sailing.  

 

[climenuts]

In the Vancouver area there's been a gradual change over to ORC from PHRF. I'm not an expert by any means because I have a 5ksb that rates 200 PHRF but:

Division 1 and 2 (PHRF 0-100ish) have been changed over to ORC and split into <600 GPH and 600-640 GPH Divisions. Division 3 and 7 (why we skip 4,5,6 I don't know) are 100-173 and 174-275).

Most SIs and NORs allow Div 3 and 7 boats holding an ORC cert to race in Div 2. Nobody elects to do this, especially for distance races, because there's no way to finish the race in the time limit sailing the long courses the Div 1 and 2 boats do.

A couple Div 2 boats were sold or haven't raced since the ORC change and others continued to perform as they did before. They would clean up under PHRF but couldn't make a podium under ORC. Seemed to me the boats that were cleaning up in PHRF were correcting over many boats quite often or their leads were extending when they took line honours. Sat down with sailwave one afternoon with old results and under ORC the well-sailed boats that were winning continued to place more/less the same but the ones with massive corrections were much more 'in the fray'.

I'm new to the scene here so someone that's been around for a while will probably correct 50% of what I said but it's how it appears to me.

 

[dlynch]

All the BS about a "Measurement-based system" being the "sine qua non" is just that...BS. History is littered with measurement-based systems. Remember IOR? IMS?

So let's all be honest and recognize that THERE IS NO PERFECT HANDICAPPING SYSTEM! Not ORR. Not ORC. Not PHRF either. 

Is one superior to the other? Recently I did an analysis of ratings of almost 50 boats in our region (Pacific Northwest) that had both PHRF and ORC certificates and plotted the ORC rating against the PHRF rating. The PHRF ratings of these boats ranged between -100 and +150. The result was a straight line and the correlation coefficient (R-squared) were excellent (0.98). This was true when comparing the ORC values for GPH, Offshore and W/L against PHRF.

I also did a analysis of races in our region from over a 3 year period comparing results using ORC and PHRF ratings. With occasional, and relatively minor changes (like the swap of a place...like 3rd and 4th between two boats) the results were identical.

So, I pose this question for discussion: Is a purely measurement-based system (like ORC) really vastly superior to PHRF? 

ORC will be better initially with unique designs that PHRF has no experience with, but the flexibility of PHRF allows that system to dial in on a fair handicap relatively quickly.

For the average racer (ie, non Grand Prix) PHRF is easier to deal with. Less expensive. Less hassle. The ability to appeal a rating (ever try to appeal an ORC rating?)

So, again, let's be honest. There is no perfect handicapping system. In my view the only perfect way to race is one-design. As regards handicapping systems maybe it's time to quit the belly-aching about how bad PHRF is and get out on the water and sail our boats. 

And for all of you that think because there are measurements taken and rigid formulas used to come up with a number that a handicap is necessarily more accurate...well go ahead and go down that road and have fun racing, too. Just don't look down your noses at those who choose PHRF as the way to enjoy handicap racing.