US Portsmouth v2

[Foredeck Shuffle]

USS tossed all US dinghy sailing to RYA. So far no one in the US seems to be using the RYA PY system for various reasons. Anyone tired of this enough to consider reviving the D-PN, call it US-PN, and start accepting numbers to caclulate ratings over time? Painful, but with the US still using the D-PN which has not been updated since 1999-2001 time frame, there is a need.

 

[Blue One]

The Rya py system works surprisingly well , but it needs real timed race information to work. If clubs don’t want to take part, it’s dead in the water.
It’s a shame your clubs don’t want to take part as it opens up racing to everyone, rather than having to class race in prehistoric classes .

 

[dogwatch]

AFAIK RYA PY is run by paid staff from data submitted by clubs volunteers. Is USS willing to spend $ on someone to collate club returns?

Enquiring minds also wonder if USS is making a financial contribution for using a scheme to which UK sailors devote time and money.

 

[Jethrow]

Hmmm, I'd say no & no...

 

[pqbon]

It will be a bit interesting as the endemic classes are quite different between the two countries.
Without US data I'm not sure the RYA PY will be too much use.
On the otherhand if the US start contributing to the PY database that would be pretty great.

 

[Blue One]

Without US data I'm not sure the RYA PY will be too much use.
On the otherhand if the US start contributing to the PY database that would be pretty great.

Not for us uk pond monkeys it wouldn’t 😂😀

 

[tillerman]

Not for us uk pond monkeys it wouldn’t 😂😀

There are lot of us pond monkeys in the US too.

 

[maxstaylock]

I wish all you mericans luck.

While not perfect, it's pretty good.

Consider how the UK scene would look if we had no way of comparing differing types of boats on the race course, we would all still be only sailing in local fleets of local classes, there would be no point in challenging for another areas trophies, as their boats are different. Nobody would try and launch a new design, as unless we had the political capital to sell it to all the local owners, it would never have a field to play in until it reached critical mass. As fleets died, through the inescapable process of crawling up their own arse over time, they would often not get replaced by new generations racing in newer fleets. So the choice for the consumer would be: if you live in X state, you must sail in Y class, where Mr Z always wins, and controls the fleet with an iron rod. Or you can fuck off. Your choice.

Sound familiar?

We live in the Information Age, it has proven a great opportunity for taking the information from hundreds of thousands of races, and processing it down to a relatively fair average handicap number for each class, given time and info, this can only keep getting better. Come on in, the water is lovely.

You can still race one design, you can still race restricted classes, you can still race development classes, some people even enjoy sailing legacy classes, but I don't know of anyone in the UK who doesn't use handicap racing at least as part of their training and entertainment mix. It's also a great way to meet sailors from other classes, and see how they perform on the water, to help us select our next class when we fancy a change.

 

[Bored Stiff]

USS tossed all US dinghy sailing to RYA. So far no one in the US seems to be using the RYA PY system for various reasons. Anyone tired of this enough to consider reviving the D-PN, call it US-PN, and start accepting numbers to caclulate ratings over time? Painful, but with the US still using the D-PN which has not been updated since 1999-2001 time frame, there is a need.

Why hasn’t the adoption of RYA methods and numbers in the US been successful? And why would D-PN be more likely to succed?

 

[Foredeck Shuffle]

The US is in its third year of no real Portsmouth system. USS redirect users to the RYA PY site and sent two emails in 2020 about the transition but from there it has stalled. I have not found a single club in the US that is committing results to the PY service. There has to be some, somewhere? There are clubs in the US that refuse to accept a boat unless it is published in the old D-PN, again not updated since 1999-2001.

I have an account with the PY service though through some technicality the account took nearly a year to get, I have no insight as to what happened, perhaps just bad luck. But by then I was no longer in charge of the smallboat fleet here and scoring had moved to something built by a club member in Google Docs and it does not conform to the format needed to input into the PY service. Submitting data would require a lot of work and sometimes the results only show finishing positions after calculations, thus they cannot be submitted.

We have two new boats in the yard. A Melges15 and an RS600, the M15 has no real rating, the 600 has a rating from what I can find historically as being from 1997. Though optimistically if you convert the D-PN rating to PY it is 914, which is only slightly off from the 920 PY rates the boat in 2017.

Even if the US only submitted data to PY so that they could get a number that was then converted to D-PN and subsequently published, it would help, a lot. I think we suffer from a lot of "not invented here", ignoring the adage that something is better than nothing.

 

[Foredeck Shuffle]

Why hasn’t the adoption of RYA methods and numbers in the US been successful? And why would D-PN be more likely to succed?

Because of American exceptionalism. See my post above.

 

[Dillon Waltner]

I have spent years wondering if I'm the only sailor in America who wants handicap racing. I have volunteered to run a handicap series at my local club - with no takers. I have tried in vain for 2 years to get some kind of response from USS on organizing and administering a handicap fleet, even if I have to travel to the larger area lakes to do it. I have talked myself blue with OD fleet commodores bemoaning the impending death of local class racing. It's a black hole. I have concluded that if I want to race, I'm going to have to buy a class boat that I don't want and don't have room for and bear the burden of selling it in a few years when the local racing dries up.

Either that or move to the UK.

 

[Foredeck Shuffle]

Hey Dillon, tell me where you are and I'll come race in your Portsmouth fleet if you can organize a yearly race. I'll try hard to bring 2-3 other boats/sailors. I'll even donate a new five gallon barrel to decorate with steel plaques to put the name of the skipper/crew on each year as a perpetual trophy. Give the fleet event a witty punful name that looks good in advertisements.

In return you help me do the following.

I think I've been staring at this problem and know the answer. Go volunteer for USSailing under the premise of promoting RYA PY adoption and for those clubs unwilling to do something new, convince them to submit PY results and convert to D-PN for them.

 

[Dillon Waltner]

Hey Dillon, tell me where you are and I'll come race in your Portsmouth fleet if you can organize a yearly race. I'll try hard to bring 2-3 other boats/sailors. I'll even donate a new five gallon barrel to decorate with steel plaques to put the name of the skipper/crew on each year as a perpetual trophy. Give the fleet event a witty punful name that looks good in advertisements.

In return you help me do the following.

I think I've been staring at this problem and know the answer. Go volunteer for USSailing under the premise of promoting RYA PY adoption and for those clubs unwilling to do something new, convince them to submit PY results and convert to D-PN for them.

I'm in northern NJ in a small lake community halfway between Greenwood Lake and Lake Hopatcong (all 3 of which have OD racing). If you're serious and somewhat close to local, I'd love to have someone to join forces with if only to get a response from US Sailing.

 

[Foredeck Shuffle]

I'm in northern NJ in a small lake community halfway between Greenwood Lake and Lake Hopatcong (all 3 of which have OD racing). If you're serious and somewhat close to local, I'd love to have someone to join forces with if only to get a response from US Sailing.

I'm not local, about 60 miles south of Annapolis. Guessing about 235 miles or 5.5 hours south of you. But my travel range is lower Canada to lower Florida for an event.

If you volunteer USS will take you so be careful what you wish/ask for. You are likely to get it. Then everyone here and elsewhere will complain about how you charge exorbitant rates for membership and do nothing other than kill sailing.

I find USS useful. Last month I retook the RC course in an online Zoom format and re-certified as a club RC official. This season I will be working on upgrading it to a regional RC official status. I think I may work on getting Judge certified next winter so I am smarter at mark roundings and can assist with PC work.

 

[Dillon Waltner]

Yeah, the enormity of trying to figure out where I can actually accomplish something runs the gamut from making changes at my club to trying to take on the culture of sailing in the US. It can get overwhelming. I'm willing to do the work. Not so sure I'm willing to make it a career and become the face of handicap racing. In the short term - I wasn't even aware of the certifications you mentioned so I think my first step is there, and then maybe I can get more of a response from the locals.

 

[Blue One]

Without the support of a national authority it sounds like a lost cause.
Can you gents give us some background about why US sailing has no interest in py racing ?
After all it’s the easiest way to keep grassroots sailing alive and still allow new classes to develop and grow .

 

[JimC]

If your clubs won't provide the data to the RYA PY what makes you think they'll provide data to any other system?

 

[Foredeck Shuffle]

It's going to require muscle at the national level. Not sure how USS can entice clubs to use RYA-PY though I can think of some ways to hold a stick over their heads such as not sanctioning a Portsmouth event at the YRA level. Though with what I've seen at some clubs I think most would just stop holding Portsmouth events entirely before giving in.

 

[Steam Flyer]

Without the support of a national authority it sounds like a lost cause.
Can you gents give us some background about why US sailing has no interest in py racing ?
After all it’s the easiest way to keep grassroots sailing alive and still allow new classes to develop and grow .

Same as it ever was. Back when I gave up on US Sailing, ~15-ish years ago, there were no small one-design racers in the upper levels of leadership, and while the published budget contradicted this assertion, they claimed that dinghy racing was sucking up the budget for no return.