It’s time to replace PHRF once and for all!
- Thread starter Weasel134
- Start date
Sail4beer
Starboard!
PHRF can’t fail as there is nothing lower. Beercan races aren’t won by cheaters, but the race is on to condemn consistent winners who have the time on water and the mods allowed under the rule to sail area.
I did a turbo for PHRF and it won easily thanks to advice from a PHRF constant champ.
No one is willing to spend the money on a rating their boats but they will bitch about the PHRF cheaters killing them. It never ends!
I did a turbo for PHRF and it won easily thanks to advice from a PHRF constant champ.
No one is willing to spend the money on a rating their boats but they will bitch about the PHRF cheaters killing them. It never ends!
Xtasea
New member
Depends if PHRF is season long, with significant single events sharing the rating... Or a regatta where its estimated on day 1... People then sandbag a few races to get their handicaps down for the important races.
Problem with IRC is that because of cheating etc, some countries now insist on weighing every year, which is a lot of hassle and cost for boats and owners just to enter in an IRC division of PHRF series.... I'm sure then people change sails, and pole length after the cert
Problem with IRC is that because of cheating etc, some countries now insist on weighing every year, which is a lot of hassle and cost for boats and owners just to enter in an IRC division of PHRF series.... I'm sure then people change sails, and pole length after the cert
Left Shift
Super Anarchist
Why would you want an RC to run a ToT PHRF race when PHRF is a ToD formula? One approximation multiplied by another approximation does not improve accuracy.
krikkitman
New member
Direct from the US PHRF Handbook:
"NRR will also encourage the switch from Time on Distance (ToD) to Time on Time (ToT). This departure from the traditional PHRF format will increase accuracy and fairness. When racing under ToD, the ratings stay the same as wind speed increases or decreases. Hence, when the wind drops, the fast boats always enjoy a rating advantage and conversely small boats enjoy a rating advantage when the wind builds.
It has been shown through analysis that a medium air strength derived ToT rating will produce accurate club level racing scoring in light air. That fact is what drives us to promote ToT NRR as the base format.
Another benefit to ToT scoring is the reduction of work for a race committee. There is no need to measure course distances to determine the corrected times. This further increases the accuracy of the ratings since there is no error when setting a course distance plus it makes putting on races easier."
See https://www.ussailing.org/competition/offshore/phrf/phrf-handicaps/
Left Shift
Super Anarchist
Yeah, I know all that. It's been in PHRF handbooks for decades. It got momentum going in the 70s and people still are pushing it. ToT had one benefit. The RC didn't have to know how long the course was, which is an irrelevant concern in the era of GPS. It also tried to address light air sport boats clumsily. But ToT has several huge flaws.
1st is the math referred to in my post. ToT is based on a middle of the fleet speed as it's conversion factor. The further you get from the middle, the less accurate the conversion is. For a minus rated boat, it becomes as distorted as tRump's world view. Approximation (PHRF rating) x approximation (Time factor basis) = greater error.
2nd, it is a whole lot easier to make tactical decisions by estimating distance than by tracking time separations.
3rd, if you hit a dead stop the clock keeps ticking and the time correction factors balloon.
ToT is fine when you are sailing in moderate consistent breeze, but then, so is ToD.
If PHRF really wanted to address the problem cited in its rationale, it would work to become a two or three number system as a ToD formula. Instead they try to fake it with ToT.
Streetwise
Super Anarchist
We use ToT almost exclusively for PHRF, and have for years. When I was recruited for our PHRF committee, I wanted to fix some things, and we did. Complaints dropped, appeals dropped. Most of the conflicts I dealt with came from folks with the biggest budgets who didn't think they were beating as many people as they deserved to beat. Joe and Jane public were happy that we could provide a provisional rating in days, so they could take the leap into racing.
Other issues can be addressed with class splits, for which we add displacement as part of the equation, but those are outside of the PHRF Committee.
Other issues can be addressed with class splits, for which we add displacement as part of the equation, but those are outside of the PHRF Committee.
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Streetwise
Super Anarchist
I can do this all day. Two or three number rating systems would kill every low-budget region. Our PHRF committee operates on zero budget, all volunteer, and we have great participation per-capita. Look at the population of western Vermont, upstate New York, and a slice of QC, and look at the registrants for one club:
https://lcyc.info/racing/registration
Cheers
PS, every PHRF region is different. Stop lumping them all together. Volunteer.
https://lcyc.info/racing/registration
Cheers
PS, every PHRF region is different. Stop lumping them all together. Volunteer.
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krikkitman
New member
VWAP
Super Anarchist
Whats PHRFer?
Any reputable PHRF administration doesn't allow for "gaming the system to get their friends a good rating." And if there is any hint of that it is not only incumbent on the Board of Directors (which is separate from the Handicapper's Council) to step in and deal with that. And even more importantly are the members, who all have the RIGHT and OBLIGATION to question the validity of any given boats handicap.
Go try and do that with ORC, or ORR, or IRC, or....
Go try and do that with ORC, or ORR, or IRC, or....
I'm calling BS. ToT or ToD...all you really need is an Excel spreadsheet...neither one is difficult to figure results.
Some parts of this discussion seem weird, looking from the land of OZ:
1. Weighing a boat should only cost a few hundred bucks, provided not done one at a time.
2. ORC will always be more type forming than IRC
3. The total cost for an initial IRC rating, valid for many years but with annual reval, is not be more than around AUD 1k. For a 36 footer in club race mode...i.e. twilight plus weekend, kept on a marina, the owners annual costs are not much less than 25k.
Who would not pay a few percent per annum for a decent system?
1. Weighing a boat should only cost a few hundred bucks, provided not done one at a time.
2. ORC will always be more type forming than IRC
3. The total cost for an initial IRC rating, valid for many years but with annual reval, is not be more than around AUD 1k. For a 36 footer in club race mode...i.e. twilight plus weekend, kept on a marina, the owners annual costs are not much less than 25k.
Who would not pay a few percent per annum for a decent system?
For Orr and orc to flourish, the rules must be used by the RCs properly. It's more straightforward if you're doing WL, the conditions tend to be static for the majority of boats so the RC can pick a wind strength that hopefully satisfies the large bulk of the fleet. Distance races are more tricky. We recently had a 35 mile point to point race on the Chesapeake that was 32 miles dead downwind, and 3 miles with the TWA at about 115ish. The RC used a coastal rating formulation that assumes all wind angles equally, because that's how they worded the SIs before the race.
Trouble is, some of the boats are very fast off wind relative to other wind angles compared to competitors, ie a Melges 32. They beat the next boat on corrected time by 6 odd minutes. The 3rd place boat was 8 mins behind the 2nd place boat on corrected. I recomputed the standings using the downwind ratings from the certificates published on yachtscoring, and the results were very different, with the 1st place boat winning by 20secs, and the gap from 2nd to 3rd being 27secs. The Melges32 moved to 6th place.
It's clear from using the downwind rating just how accurate ORC can be if used right. Conditions across the Bay for the race were as consistent as I've seen for any point to point race in my 50+ years of racing, and there were very few tactical decisions to make. If the RCs don't take the effort to use the correct rating numbers it's all junk anyway.
We had quite a bit of back and forth after the race with organizers, and hopefully we will get better implementation of the rule in future races. If that doesn't change, I forsee ORC losing participants very soon. My conversations with long-time Bay racers who I've raced with my whole life is they are right on the edge of bagging ORC unless this changes quickly. Hopefully it does, because it has the potential to be way better than phrf, which is garbage.
Trouble is, some of the boats are very fast off wind relative to other wind angles compared to competitors, ie a Melges 32. They beat the next boat on corrected time by 6 odd minutes. The 3rd place boat was 8 mins behind the 2nd place boat on corrected. I recomputed the standings using the downwind ratings from the certificates published on yachtscoring, and the results were very different, with the 1st place boat winning by 20secs, and the gap from 2nd to 3rd being 27secs. The Melges32 moved to 6th place.
It's clear from using the downwind rating just how accurate ORC can be if used right. Conditions across the Bay for the race were as consistent as I've seen for any point to point race in my 50+ years of racing, and there were very few tactical decisions to make. If the RCs don't take the effort to use the correct rating numbers it's all junk anyway.
We had quite a bit of back and forth after the race with organizers, and hopefully we will get better implementation of the rule in future races. If that doesn't change, I forsee ORC losing participants very soon. My conversations with long-time Bay racers who I've raced with my whole life is they are right on the edge of bagging ORC unless this changes quickly. Hopefully it does, because it has the potential to be way better than phrf, which is garbage.
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It's likely more accurate using the float measurements and hull lines than a scale on a lift to get the weight of a boat. Calibration of a weight scale requires use of a lot of standard weights that have been verified to have any confidence, and that sure as hell is not likely to ever happen.
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Ya but the cell should be calibrated for every measurement. Who's gonna do that? As an R&D engineer, I would not trust any black box measurement device without calibrating immediately before and after the measurement. I've seen too many fuck ups in my career on such "wonderous" company-promised devices to ever trust them.
I would trust that the hull lines are more accurate than any load cell from my experience. Sample the water to get density, use a tape measure and you're done. I'd bet within a few pounds using that method. At 62 to 64 pounds per cubic feet of water, what's the most you'll be off by? 15 pounds probably. Fuck load more accurate than some load cell.
