John Cairns wrote:
Did the same thing, one port-to-port to the Canadian side, then two buoy
races on Sunday, lots o' partying in between, and those Canadians do a nice
party. The only sour notes, 2nd places all the way around, worse than
finishing last, IMHO.

Why? A good close race gets the juices flowing... one of the
reasons why I don't enjoy PHRF so much, or take it all that
seriously.

If you win all the time, you need to find a tougher fleet to
race against.


... And a little controversy with the good folks of Essex
phrf. They took away 3 seconds from our rating, and they don't have a J33 in
Essex phrf!

How did they justify that?

But remember, arguing about rating is secondary to sailing.
If you don't like your rating, there are processes to appeal
it but the real issue is one of personality conflict.
Handicapping committees are just as political as any other
body comprised to hand out awards that people value.


... In the end it wouldn't have made a difference, we would have
lost the last tie-breaking race by 7 seconds, but the idea is extremely
annoying. And the way they race over there is a little nutty, but it served
the useful purpose of educating folks on our end of the lake. Every year
folks come up with the brilliant suggestion of starting the slow boats
first

Personally I have been in this type of regatta many times
and rather like it. It can get a little annoying when some
of the "speed bump" boats are persistently swarming on your
bow... more so when they are also woefully ignorant of the
rules...



... and we had a good demonstration of what that looks like on the course
Sunday. One of the slow boats from our end, a Catalina 34 allowed that maybe
it wasn't a good idea after all, what with trying to get out of the way of
the fast boats and the absolute cluster f***s at the roundings.

To some extent I can sympathize, but sailing in close
proximity to a fleet is what racing *is*. If you take that
element out, then what are you doing? Time trials?


.... We may have
lost the race due to an idiot that tacked in front of us at the end of the
race, they were so slow coming out of the tack that we might have passed in
front of them instead of ducking them, not even ducking, having to go well
behind them. Gotta love handicap racing. Some of us were discussing the
possibility of North American phrf ratings, there being absolutely no reason
for identical boats to have different ratings in different parts of the
country or from state to state.


You're right, although the usual excuse is that local
conditions make a difference in the boats relative
performance. A bigger factor IMHO is that people who sail a
one-design boat in an area where there is not a fleet have
the burden of a boat that is sailed hotly (with
corresponding rating) but not the advantage of learning the
tuning & techniques from the hot sailors in that boat.

The Brits have a great handicap system in the Portsmouth
Yardstick which is (AFAIK) nationally administered. What
makes it work is that race results are scrupulously reported
and data times/conditions are statisically analyzed. The
goal (unlike most PHRF regions) is to have scrupulously fair
ratings that maximize the chances for any good ompetitor to win.

For an example of contrasting thinking, I had a brief talk
with the regatta chair of our race this past weekend
regatta. I mentioned that it was not fair to have an
arbitrary time limit that could allow a fast rated boat to
finish and cut off a slower boat before elapsed time
difference of it's handicap had expired, thus leaving them
with no chance of winning. He said, "You're wrong, there's
nothing unfair about it at all" but no explanation for what
options the slower boat should exercise.

When we were racing the Johnson 18 under the USSA Portsmouth
handicap system, I always made a point of requesting that
the finish times be reported to USSA for the purpose of
upating the handicaps. In several cases, race committees
which included members of classes with very favorable
handicaps refused. What can you do then?

DSK