"Nils Rostedt" wrote in message ...

- The standard of the boats and crew skills in IMS is both generally higher
and has less variance than in LYS. In LYS, everybody participates, from
Grand Prix sailors and boats to beginners with cruising boats with their
bottoms covered by barnacles. As IMS is the top level class, the
participants have a higher standard (and those not up to it often quit after
a while).

This is true, but the top half of LYS are mostly "IMS boats" (and
you). Some IMS crews might not be as serious in LYS races, which might
have an effect.



- In IMS, at least in Finland, the corrected times are for some reason
normalized against a virtual "scratch boat" with GPH somewhere around 550
sec/mi. The result is that published corrected time differences are only
about 1/2 to 2/3 of the actual times that one needs to sail faster in order
to beat the winner. Why the scratch boat GPH is not chosen from the actual
fleet's speed range, I don't know


This seem to vary from race to race. In Offshore week the scratch boat
was the fastest boat in the whole fleet (GPH=561.8). The difference to
slowest boats isn't more than 30%.

In LYS the corrected time differences are typically more than the
actual difference needed to win, since the corrected times are 1 - 1.4
times larger.

If you compare the time differences in these systems, you have to
think percentually. Then these issues shouldn't matter.

Joakim