US Portsmouth v2

[Tcatman]

One thing I have noticed is that club fleets are built with great difficulty, typically by charismatic individuals, and fall apart with great ease if the individual departs or changes class. If sailors were really as focussed on class racing as is often stated then as soon as a critical mass is reached fleets would grow and grow. If anything, my observation is that its something of the opposite, and what is more, a firm 'pecking order' tends to be destructive of numbers.

In practice folk seem to be as happy to be racing Fred, who is slower in a faster class, or Jane, who is faster in a slower class, as they are to race someone in the same or very similar class. Now I think of it, I wonder if handicap racing tends to have less intense boat on boat tactics, and thus is less pressured and more relaxing. And thus more fun.

charismatic individuals" would describe the Stuart Walker and the Soling Class experience.... He and a very spirited competitor held a local fleet of soliings ex olympic class together for 20 years beyond. It was competitive and valued in Annapolis.

A pecking order is human and inevitable..... what is destructive is a firm pecking order where nothing changes.... What you describe with fred and jane are the pecking order for fun competition. ... Its just dynamic and that is what keeps it vibrant. (note added... See Martin T)

The conundrum remains..... US Sailors won't put any effort into handicap racing on the travel weekends. they only value one design.... What am I missing about the US Experience or what is unique that we in the states value?

Is it simply that the charismatic individual is completely vested in the one design class for their own reasons and that is the only game a float because that is what they do? Or is it .... The successful boat dealer combines their business with their fleet building and that is how it works??? (see Gouv in laser threads) One other idea is that my local clubs would only award you a boat parking slot IF you had one of the one design classes that the club supported..... Handicap was not a sustainable club growth strategy.

 

[Kazrob]

obviously a nat champion rock star will not find competition in your club race)

That's not obviously true. I know a multi class National Champion who still races regularly at his club in a mixed fleet, because he just loves sailing and we have an ex-Contender World Champ at our club who also loves his club handicap racing. In both cases their races may not be against the same class of boat, but rather to beat the other good sailors or to beat a faster class across the water. More than anything it is about having fun, and not necessarily about winning trophies.

 

[Tcatman]

Ok... It is gonna be a strong club if your nat champion finds ONE DESIGN competition at their club events (which was the point) ... and thank you for making the larger point.... your friend races because ...
"but rather to beat the other good sailors or to beat a faster class across the water."
As stuart always noted.... competitors compete because that is who they are.
Nobody said ANYTHING about winning trophies.... I am asking about competition... and at the core.... competition is fun.... (otherwise... just go sailing..... also fun but different)

Why is it that in the US....we only value the one design competition... a 5 boat one design event is more valuable then a 15 boat handicap event... (I know everyone can count how many of the one design boats they are racing are in front of them and behind them in each and every race)

 

[Foredeck Shuffle]

Few, if any, of these racers would travel for a mixed fleet handicap regatta. Many, perhaps most, DO travel nearly every Summer weekend to race one-design and a number also travel to regional and National events. Growing fleets - MC Scow - are quite active. Sustaining fleets - Flying Scot, Laser - are steady. Dying fleets - Lightning - declining. Comatose fleets - Woodpussy - on life support.

I thought that as well until I moved to a place that is nearly always handicap. Several boats travel and I found that they go to places to race OD but some were hitting Portsmouth fleets. When I first noticed I looked down on it as well. Why would anyone spend money and not race OD?!?

Then I noticed that some of the events had large Portsmouth fleets. After two years of local handicap racing my OD narrow view expanded I checked out other boats that were not OD anywhere and I started putting on sails that were more fun but not OD. There are plenty of travel events, at least in the Mid-Atlantic US that are very fun, such as the Virginia Governors Cup at WRSC.

When I was in Annapolis the idea of racing anything but OD felt implicitly bad. Now I realize I spent three decades sailing and owning boats I didn't really like.

 

[Tcatman]

I definitely know it's frustrating but transparency isn't the issue. The DPN formulas were available on USS so you could recalculate base numbers and calculate your own provisional ratings. You can still find them here (https://www.ussailing.org/wp-conten...th-American-Portsmouth-Yardstick-Handbook.pdf).

But, as a statistician, I completely agree that they are out-of-date. Ultimately, I think it's up to the clubs to decide what they want to use. They can even develop their own rating systems based off of their unique environmental conditions.

Yes all of the mechanics of the dixie portsmouth system are published... the code is written in Fortran and processes 100 data points. for the rating. It works WHEN the underlying assumptions stated in the introduction are met. This is my point about transparency....

To your point that clubs can do their own thing... Absolutely.... we have several PHRF ratings boards all over the country and they don't share ratings. If you don't travel from club to club... None of this matters.. Should we attempt to have a national or world ratings table?... Yes! Beach cats use SCHRS for handicap racing and its value is recognized world wide. Do you need local and regional input... absolutely... I don't know how many woodpussy's are sailing in france for instance.

 

[JimC]

It works WHEN the underlying assumptions stated in the introduction are met.

I must confess to being somewhat mind boggled by this one "The boat placing first in each class was sailed to its true potential by a perfect crew according to flawless strategy"

 

[Blue One]

Total

I must confess to being somewhat mind boggled by this one "The boat placing first in each class was sailed to its true potential by a perfect crew according to flawless strategy"

Totally agree . Does anyone really think in the whole of sail racing that a race has been won by a boat sailed to it true potential by a perfect crew according to flawless strategy ?
It’s never happened and it never will . 😀

 

[maxstaylock]

Yes! Beach cats use SCHRS for handicap racing and its value is recognized world wide. Do you need local and regional input... absolutely...

Kind of. I race both. PY works because all the racers adhere to their class rules. SCHRS is good because it lets you race any boat with any sail or crew combination, and it spits out a number for the handicap box on the entry form. But in terms of offering fair racing, SCHRS can't come close to PY, in PY there is no ego, the numbers don't lie, if their is an imbalance, it will course correct over time, the magic of cold hard data.

But SCHRS suffers from the same human biases all rating system have built in, the bias to type form towards the type of boat the formula inventors already own and sail. The result is you either sail a class with the narrow attributes that make it rate well to hunt trophies, or race the boat you actually want to sail, and accept you're just making up the numbers.

 

[Tcatman]

I must confess to being somewhat mind boggled by this one "The boat placing first in each class was sailed to its true potential by a perfect crew according to flawless strategy"

Why does this boggle your mind.... we are not describing the real world.... we are characterizing the portsmouth space... It is not real!!! when 5 boats of the same class race on handicap ... only one of them crosses the line ahead of the others (real)... he did not sail perfectly... but when you apply the class rating and enter into this unreal space where because he is first in fleet... we declare in portsmouth space... this performance was perfect. .... The only reason to even enter this unreal world is to compare the performance of the laser sailor with the force 5 sailor applying their rating to his finish time. Remember... the objective of the dixie system is to build a table of the max potential of a design. so... to measure the true performance of the boat... you have to say that every helm was perfect. How would you describe Joe, the first place laser's performance in the unreal portsmouth space? Now.... long ago you persuaded me that this approach was crazy... but as you can see.... this is how it works. The best way to understand the US dixie system given this "perfect language" is to make sure that every handicap racer converts their finish delta BACK INTO THE REAL WORLD.... the back calculated elapsed result!..... if you lost by 15 actual seconds.... well.... the late start of 2 seconds and the three tacks that you flubbed add up.. if you won the race.... you certainly know where you screwed up and lost some time... Again.... when you enter porstmouth space......stuff happens ! now for the PN Table.... you take 100 such instances compared to the yardstick of 100 such instances and that is the rating. Clearly... you need the fleet for this to make any sense.

 

[Tcatman]

Kind of. I race both. PY works because all the racers adhere to their class rules. SCHRS is good because it lets you race any boat with any sail or crew combination, and it spits out a number for the handicap box on the entry form. But in terms of offering fair racing, SCHRS can't come close to PY, in PY there is no ego, the numbers don't lie, if their is an imbalance, it will course correct over time, the magic of cold hard data.

But SCHRS suffers from the same human biases all rating system have built in, the bias to type form towards the type of boat the formula inventors already own and sail. The result is you either sail a class with the narrow attributes that make it rate well to hunt trophies, or race the boat you actually want to sail, and accept you're just making up the numbers.

So... do you have specific issues with an SHCRS rating .. or is your position simply one of philosophical principle?

 

[JimC]

Why does this boggle your mind.... we are not describing the real world.... we are characterizing the portsmouth space...

It's because my whole mindset for this exercise is based around the viewpoint of a statistical approach. So to me fleet leaders are outliers, on the top edge of a skewed distribution curve of finishing times. And as, like many UK sailors, I learned to race on shifty gusty confined inland waters, it seems rather alien to me that there could be a perfect race or a true potential performance for a boat. So basing everything on these outliers is, well, just alien to my thinking.

Intellectually I understand the approach has been considered satisfactory, and I can see that, especially given few classes and good numbers in each class it can work, but it still doesn't sit well in my head. There was thinking around the concepts of true potential and perfect races in some PYS documentation back in the 60s, but that's really long gone. It's also a difficult thing to establish with stats. So we don't think of that anymore. All we seek to do is reflect the observed performance of the active fleets out in the clubs, and goodness knows that's enough of a challenge.

Whilst in fantasy land it might be possible to have ideal handicaps that would give ties between brand new boats sailed by crews of identical ability, in practice such a concept is impossible working from empirical data. And empirical handicapping is above all the art of the possible. Still, we always need to recognise that times change, and lots of other approaches are viable. PYS only works where there are reasonable numbers of boats maintained in classes. Its been largely abandoned for cruiser racing in the UK, for instance, because there just weren't the classes any more. We have NHC for that, which pays minimal attention to classes, or for the serious lead miners IRC, which uses empirical data to construct a rating formula. Plus SCHRS and goodness knows how many local systems.

 

[Dex Sawash]

There are plenty of travel events, at least in the Mid-Atlantic US that are very fun, such as the Virginia Governors Cup

My daughter was directed not to have a baby around first weekend of August if she expected me to attend the birth or subsequent birthday celebrations. She had one July 31 which has caused some disruption in my VA GOVCUP attendance in last 5 years. More sensibly, she had her second kid in mid April.

 

[Tcatman]

It's because my whole mindset for this exercise is based around the viewpoint of a statistical approach. So to me fleet leaders are outliers, on the top edge of a skewed distribution curve of finishing times. And as, like many UK sailors, I learned to race on shifty gusty confined inland waters, it seems rather alien to me that there could be a perfect race or a true potential performance for a boat. So basing everything on these outliers is, well, just alien to my thinking.

Intellectually I understand the approach has been considered satisfactory, and I can see that, especially given few classes and good numbers in each class it can work, but it still doesn't sit well in my head. There was thinking around the concepts of true potential and perfect races in some PYS documentation back in the 60s, but that's really long gone. It's also a difficult thing to establish with stats. So we don't think of that anymore. All we seek to do is reflect the observed performance of the active fleets out in the clubs, and goodness knows that's enough of a challenge.

Whilst in fantasy land it might be possible to have ideal handicaps that would give ties between brand new boats sailed by crews of identical ability, in practice such a concept is impossible working from empirical data. And empirical handicapping is above all the art of the possible. Still, we always need to recognise that times change, and lots of other approaches are viable. PYS only works where there are reasonable numbers of boats maintained in classes. Its been largely abandoned for cruiser racing in the UK, for instance, because there just weren't the classes any more. We have NHC for that, which pays minimal attention to classes, or for the serious lead miners IRC, which uses empirical data to construct a rating formula. Plus SCHRS and goodness knows how many local systems.

ah... got it. Dixie yardstck developed in the 50's..... Our thinking stopped. because what really mattered to dinghy fleets was their one design scene. This thread points out that culture has not changed for 50 years. Handicap racing is a lesser alternative. All of the US sailors should really try to understand how the RYA differs an what it takes to generate a valid rating.for new classes and updating ratings for active fleets of old classes and what happens to ratings for dead classes. Dixie Portsmouth cannot be updated with integrity. The table can be updated by agreement if that is what you want. The RYA system is maintained with integrity and supported by the sailors that actually use it. It makes the most sense to integrate the dead boats as provisional entries in the RYA table so that customers can run events without having to come up with a rating. Contribute what data we can and allow the RYA system to work. At the basic level.... the RYA Tables deliver a handicap racing scene that sailors enjoy playing.... the USPN Tables have never moved the fun facor above the dreaded red headed step child of real sailboat racing... Time to change!!!

 

[maxstaylock]

So... do you have specific issues with an SHCRS rating .. or is your position simply one of philosophical principle?

These are all opinions, one mans feature is another mans glitch.

SCHRS like any measurement systems has 'desirable features', so heavy, trapeze, spinnaker, double handers, do very well, spinnakers for example are basically free sail area. They do this for a variety of I'm sure well meaning reasons. But if you have a lightweight boat, or a skeg boat, or a singlehander, or race without a spinnaker, you are unlikely to bother the podium. The result of this, the good sailors from the classes outside the type form are unlikely to bother SCHRS racing, or at least take it seriously, so it becomes a self perpetuating system.

I'm not saying PY would work better with cats in the UK, as only maybe 5 or 6 classes would generate the returns to get a reasonably accurate handicap number, all the dead one designs and newly developed platforms would have nowhere to play, SCHRS does its best, the cat scene is not the dinghy scene, and anyone who sets up as a handicap officer has a thankless task.

By comparison, in the mono PY world, I can race classes that have a spinnaker, or don't have a spinnaker, I can sail plastic boats or carbon epoxy, and anything in between, with equal expectation of a fair result that reflects the skill and judgment of the sailor(s). I can sail a single-handed class or a double hander, again with no bias etc etc.

I know certain weather conditions and courses are going to favour certain types, but it all averages out during the course of a series, and everyone from 8 to 80, skinny or fat bastard, adrenaline junky or soul surfer, romantic or classical, can find a class they can race and enjoy, conversely, if you type form the boats, you type form the sailors, I find that a diverse dinghy park and a diverse changing room makes a club a lovely place to be.

As a result, I will hook up my dinghy and travel to any well run well attended PY handicap event within striking distance, and if I get some class racing it'll be a bonus. But I'll only hook up my cat to attend events with a strong class presence, and ideally a class start, as my SCHRS rating is basically impossible to sail to, it's not worth the price of a tank of gas.

I am not trying to hijack this thread into the merits or otherwise of other handicapping / rating rules, there have been hundreds, and there will be many more. After all everyone knows nice unrestricted box rules are the only fair judge of sailor in existence. Just pointing out that all rating and handicap systems that rely on human opinions are guaranteed to suffer from human bias, whether intended or accidental.

Nice simple one number time on time Portsmouth Yardstick has outlived basically every measurement or quasi performance handicapping system in existence, ever (except maybe International Rule, which endures because it makes all the boats equally shit), and does this by being hard to screw up, either at an operation race officer level, or for the clever calculators that keep it running. Long live PY.

 

[Tcatman]

These are all opinions, one mans feature is another mans glitch.

Thank you.... very thoughtful reply! Nothing really to disagree with you.... your intro summed it up

But I'll only hook up my cat to attend events with a strong class presence, and ideally a class start, as my SCHRS rating is basically impossible to sail to, it's not worth the price of a tank of gas.

You captured WHY this discussion is important in this comment. If the competition is buggered... welp... not worth the tank of gas.

US Dixie PN and SCHRS build ratings tables for ALL of the cats and the ratings are supposed to reflect the max boat performance. Back in the day... rank an file sailors would say... OH.... I can't sail to the rating.... that was set by Randy Smythe against the locals... The rating is not fair. Today you might hear ".. Oh... the SCHRS measurement rating rule doesn't fairly rate my "skeg" boat" The RYA PN is going to have fleet ratings for at most 6 or 7 active cat classes these days. Nothing is going to be perfect.... my standard ... Is it good enough? does it have integrity? and is it transparent? Jim C commented that the handicap table is less important then most people think....but... he looks at the actual numbers.... Sailors should look at their results against boats in class and the PN fleet as BCE and the rating they actually sailed to... It would be a realty check and inject some balance to the debate.

 

[Kazrob]

A quick comment on the OD v Handicap thing as they are not mutually exclusive. You could have 5 starts of 5 boat OD fleets, but you could equally have one start with 25 boats and extract both handicap and OD results. You can still race one-to-one with your buddies in Lasers and even if that is among larger or smaller boats of different classes, the challenges of getting round the race course as fast as possible are the same for everyone in your class. If you win your class AND win on handicap, you've probably sailed quite well that day.

 

[Tcatman]

You could have 5 starts of 5 boat OD fleets, but you could equally have one start with 25 boats and extract both handicap and OD results.

Absolutely... but in the US we never do this... The question is why? what is it about how we do sailboat racing that gives us this result. Ego? competition? resistance to change? I don't have a strong argument.... Is it as simple as... well... I can race my dinghy in pn and my cat one design and those are the only options worth the gas.

 

[JimC]

The trouble with extracting results for fleet racing from a handicap series is that ultimately you have competing tactical imperatives. In a fleet race you sail against the fleet, you put on a loose cover and so on, even if it means accepting an unfavourable shift. In handicap racing you can't cover the majority of your opponents, so such tactics aren't so good.

 

[Dillon Waltner]

The fun part of handicap racing is the race within the race on the water.
You can have somebody who is not very experienced but is sailing a faster class, having a great tussle with well sailed slower classes.
On the results sheets it shows they were thrashed but the boat on boat action far outweighs the result. They feel they were part of the race not just tailend charlies crossing the finish line miles behind the rest of their fleet, being put off, giving up & never to be seen again.

I regularly have a battle in my Laser Radial (PY 1147) against a Kestrel (PY 1038). Officially he should be miles ahead of me, but the grins & banter as we cross tack & swap places is immeasurable.

I've informally had similar experiences racing my Rocket against a guy with a Hobie 16. The Sunfish guys are more interested in beating me than they are in having fun. QED.

 

[martin 'hoff]

I thought that as well until I moved to a place that is nearly always handicap. Several boats travel and I found that they go to places to race OD but some were hitting Portsmouth fleets. When I first noticed I looked down on it as well. Why would anyone spend money and not race OD?!?

Then I noticed that some of the events had large Portsmouth fleets. After two years of local handicap racing my OD narrow view expanded I checked out other boats that were not OD anywhere and I started putting on sails that were more fun but not OD. There are plenty of travel events, at least in the Mid-Atlantic US that are very fun, such as the Virginia Governors Cup at WRSC.

When I was in Annapolis the idea of racing anything but OD felt implicitly bad. Now I realize I spent three decades sailing and owning boats I didn't really like.

This this this this.