Here's the thing Todd, foilers need us more than we need them. The price of admission is 45k and the boat is significantly harder to sail than a non foiler and sailing is on the decline across the board. Do you really think foiling platforms are good for the sport? Are you foiling your A cat? If not, why not?

Why is the H16 still the most popular multihull class on the planet!?

Do you really think the one percenters are going to line up for the G4?

As for the FL300 the foilers will have their race and we will have ours, they will have their big boat start and finish and we will start and finish through the surf like a proper beachcat.

Based on Jeff, Mark, Tim and others putting foiling boats with non foiling boats is pointless. Also DPN with it's lack of effort by the care takers has shown it is time for retirement. As much as it pains me to agree with Mark S about anything handicap related, DPN is done.

We are US Sailing Members, when I get sent an email a few days before an event marked as "High Priority" stating that "The only way to change these numbers is to provide accurate race results for analysis." seems to me a mandate.

The problem is not whether or not I agree. The problem was timing and it came days after I specifically requested no further updates until after our event.

As far as where they came up with the numbers. If you read the email you were copied on (5/14/14), you will find the following requested from and answered by a boat owner:


This whole deal has really pissed me off. Even after I have requested numerous times to have the "Provisional Rating" posted to the Portsmouth table, it has never been done. All the results from the beginning of the sail series (2004-Dave Ingram Champion to present) are posted on the SailSeries.com. Not all of the times have been posted for each race because they were taken from various organizations. It was not till last year we have actually managed events.

Here is the deal. If US Sailing posts the provisional ratings they wanted me to enforce and were never posted, I will send them all of the results from last year and future results as long as they post ratings they want me to uphold. If they continually ignore my emails, there is no reason to send them any additional information. To go a step further, we will adopt a different rating system.

By sending us Portsmouth ratings and not posting them, other clubs will use what they have used in the past because there is nothing official. By telling us to use different ratings and not making them official (posting them), you make us lose credibility and justly so.

I would rather spend more time working on my boat than this whole political BS.

I wouldn't say it is pointless, but there are realities to having disparate boat types in the same race. Take something like the Bloody Mary in the UK. It is a one day pursuit race on a reservoir in the middle of winter. The weather sucks, but they get several HUNDRED boats out there racing portsmouth. The boats range from Toppers and Wayfarers to International Canoes and yes, foiling Moths.

When it is breezy (2013) the Moths clean up. When it is light (2015) the Moths get smoked by "slow" boats. As long as everyone excepts the realities, then I don't think it is a big deal.

On a long windy reach, a foiling cat is going to kill all the beer at the finish before the rest of the fleet is done launching.... but on a light upwind or deep run the last thing I want to do is drag around an L shaped board.

I love to foil- it is a completely unique feeling and is highly addictive. I also love big fleet F18 racing. It's all good.

With regret, I am starting to agree. I think that a system like Portsmouth stands a considerable chance to be more accurate but it relies more on the collective effort of event organizers coupled with activity from the handicap system leadership. I don't know that there has been a true statistical refreshing of the numbers, or if they even have enough event results from which to do so, in a very long time. The people running the committee now aren't necessarily plugged into our regattas, so we should never expect that they are going to actively search out our various websites for results.

I have seen the math behind them and it is very complex and a bit over my head without a good bit of additional book-learning...there probably aren't many involved volunteers that have the statistics skills to rebuild/recalculate the numbers in the same way that they have been done in the past and while I don't know much about the people that are currently involved, I'm guessing that this could be part of the problem too.

I don't mind portsmouth, but I race in a fleet that is basically two boats. F16, and F18. I think it's pretty close, and pretty fair there. BUT, the difference between the two boats is pretty small performance wise.

Somebody has to spearhead something about though. I'm lazy, you're lazy, and we both want someone else to do it. My thought has always been that it needs to be a combination of a reported and adjusted number like portsmouth, but acting as a modifier to another measurement system. Mostly because neither system is perfect. Take hard data and punch it into Texel or SCHRS to get an initial number, then use reports to tweak it and adjust it. Maybe that'd be another less than ideal situation as well? No system will be perfect.

This starting to sound a lot like PHRF...

That's a tricky question. Some would say that the decline of cat sailing is because the modern boats have become more involved, harder to sail, way more physical, and much more expensive as is. We're been in decline for a long time, even before the boats started really changing. It's hard to say what the cause is. That topic has been beaten to death, with no real answers as to what or why. Realistically, probably everyone is correct, and you can throw some cultural things in there as well. People just don't spend as much time doing physical, outdoor activities as they once did, and attending regatta's is an expensive time suck. Personally, for me? I don't think I could go back to racing simpler boat like a H16. It's quirky, it's weird, and you need a dick shaking medicine man to understand the voodoo tuning of the boat. I damn near pulled the trigger on that Flying Phantom that was in Wisconsin that Tomko bought. Why? I think it is extremely cool. Why didn't I buy it? Because I need that money to fund a new home for my business, and blowing $50k on a new toy would've set that back substantially. (I'm considering not replacing my boat if I sell it just so I've got another $20k in capital for that as well) I think that foiling will do a couple of things. It will drive away some, it will attract others. Those that aren't interested in the latest bleeding edge boat still have options though. A-Cat, F16, F18, H16, and the basket full of dead boats out there. So the biggest problem there, is that it is diluting the classes, and that is a problem. You fall below critical mass, and your class is done. A-Class, and F18 aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the F16 is still an emerging class. On the flip side, the Moth was dead and gone before the switch to foiling. A bold move that could've finished off the class, but is now flourishing because of that change. Those aren't cheap boats either.




Because they are like roadkill. There's one along the side of the road everywhere. Plus, they are cheap(ish) to buy new. I think a new Hobie 16 is around $10k currently. That's way less than half of a new F16/18, even if you get a smokin' deal on one.






What's a G4?

Am I to understand that the issue concerns getting the data TO the committee?

I thought programs like Sailwave allowed the user to upload data in the correct format to the Portsmouth committee (or whomever)?

If it were as simple as clicking a button to upload data, would we still have as big a hurdle in revising DPN numbers?? If true, how hard is it to convince the race organizers (and software platforms) to make this happen? That would certainly make things easier than trying to have the committee hunt down various websites for results?

And I think it is certainly agreeable that distance races probably ought not to contribute significantly to handicap numbers.

But we originally were talking about boats with no prior DPN / rating and how to develop one, correct? That prompted my suggestion about polars..

+1 on foilers and non-foilers being too different to handicap correctly. Kind of like Tim's suggestion of starting Kite boards and cats together. Would be fun, but exceedingly difficult to handicap.

And I don't care what my DPN is, the Mug race and other pursuit type events are still fun in their own way... I'm sure a sailing canoe probably won that event once or twice in the history of that event.

Rating systems...yes they suck. Can they be fixed no, but they can be improved? How you ask? Well it is easy, you got to fix it yourself. The problem is us, you, me and them. As mentioned on this thread earlier. Everyone wants someone else to do the work so "we" can sail. If everyone who posted on this thread, flew to the US Sailing meetings and showed up every time to get the ratings "corrected" then they would be changed. What is the likely hood of that? It can be done and we could get it to work better.
Just for a second lets imagine that we did just that. Now fast forward 2 years from now. Would the rates be correct? The answer to that would depend on who answered the question. Lets say 10 of us went to all the meetings and hashed out a solution (read compromise). We would likely still have 10 different opinions on what would be "correct". Now throw into the mix, that this group is now the DPN "fixers", when are you going to fix the sunfish rating? Thistle, highlander, Flying Scot, Laser, foiling laser, San Juan 21, the Rainbow 24, that damn Melges 24. etc., etc.
Face it Catamarans are small fish in a big pond. Add to the equation, none of us want to go to the meetings and go through all the Bul..hit.
I am just as guilty as everyone else. In my earlier days I did go to a lot of the meetings. I did learn how it all worked. It is neither good or bad, as all it is, are volunteers trying to push for their interest. We do not push for ours enough, so we do not get much attention.
Are the rating systems wrong? No question. They all are, most do not know just how wrong they are.
Can they be fixed? They can be improved, but never "fixed". Mainly because we do not have anywhere near the capability to include all the variables to accurately compare 2 different vessels and never will.
So the system is mostly a political one, as they all are. If you think one is using just math data to calculate ratings and that it would be correct, then you can easily be fooled. There are just too many variables. It can be improved, but who is going to do it?
Now, back to that volunteer who will not return our emails...
By the way how do we rate a foiling kite board that is going to race us?
The easy answer to the original question, is no that rating is wrong. So are all the other boats, too.
By the way, if someone takes the lead, I would be willing to join the "10" going to "fix" the rating systems. Otherwise I will see you out on the water.
Cheers

Craig, I do recall that email, which is why I asked if the PN was based on sailor data. My understanding was that they took your provided info to create the PN. I think you took their statement about changing the number out of context (probably because you were getting the runaround at a stressful time), he was simply reinforcing that numbers can't arbitrarily be changed, you have to provide race data.

Several of you have echoed what I've been saying above without directly replying to my posts. I'm guessing that means we're in agreement about a few things:

PN isn't perfect, but it's established, and is the least amount of work for us.

The only way to improve the accuracy of the PN system is to provide data. The committee will not seek data, it must be sent to them. One would think that this would be easier than ever with online scoring (or even plain old email), but this is the one area that constantly gets overlooked on our end.

The PN committee has not been doing a great job of being timely with responses. The best way to fix that would be to have a volunteer step up to serve on the committee.

PN numbers don't get issued overnight, even after the committee has made contact with you. I've seen several last-minute attempts to get numbers end the same way: in great disappointment.

Yes, we can (and maybe should) throw PN aside and adopt something else. That takes even more time and effort, and still leaves the problem of what to do with new designs (or an old design that never got a number and shows up to race).

Mike

That provisional portsmouth number was issued 7/9/2010 10:26 PM but never added to the tables. It is almost a year ago that they sent me the info that they dug up. Still not added to the tables.

If they are not adding numbers that they already have and don't answer emails, why would I expect them to use additional info I send.

There are SailWave plugins to send to Yachts and Yatching, RYA, ISAF and SailRacer.co.uk. I am sure if you enquired, Sailwave would probably add a Portsmouth plugin.

Not that I am aware of for US Sailing. They do that for other organizations, though. Darline and I worked on that briefly during one of the US sailing website revamps to establish an ftp area where that data could be submitted directly from Sailwave and though the Sailwave folks were happy and willing to oblige, we didn't get much of a reaction from the US sailing web folks. Truthfully, we didn't go crazy pushing it because we really didn't have a way to handle the data once we got it. Darline was still doing most, if not all, of the heavy lifting at the time and she no longer had a computer capable of running the old-school Fortran based statistics software anymore. I was familiar with Fortran (college) but I couldn't put it all together either.

C'mon Dave, we're friends. I've emailed or called you numerous times about all sorts of topics when I wasn't sure about them, so the answer could be real easy for you!

I told them I didn't care what the number was. We're only out there to learn how to sail the boat. There is no DPN rating. I suggested MYC put us somewhere between the RC30 and M20, but closer to the 30 number. I'm not in the business of setting the rating for boats. In my opinion, the RC got it wrong, we should be rated higher than the M20 in heavy seagrass conditions ha!

We did foil at the start for a bit, but there were too many weeds to keep it going. We did seven back downs during the race. We finally figured out how to make it really go after the bridge. Bret was in front of us until we passed him ?less than a mile from the finish. At that point we were fully foiling upwind! (no seagrass)

As far as FCS vs. Phantom, we were on the same course at Eurocat, but had separate starts. The RC posted our lap times but not the Phantom lap times so the jury is technically still out on which platform is faster. I couldn't find the Phantom in the Texel rating sheet just now either.

I agree that putting foilers and non-foilers in the same class is extremely difficult to score because the platforms are faster in different conditions. The rating for foiling boats should be quite extreme, when non foiling they are very draggy, then really fast in foiling conditions. We need way more data for sure. That is the rating game though. Factor in foiling skill as well and that is a whole different matter. At least we're not rated "All Sails!" I'd rather be racing OD, but let's not get into that one:-)

having to travel so much just to address a PHRF rating seems daft when it could be done mostly by technology..

The FTP that you were working on (Jake) seems easy enough but not if the US Sailing webhosts aren't motivated... What a wonderful reason to pay my renewal subscription, though...

How math-heavy is the PHRF calculation once the data hits the US Sailing servers?

And how does one justify that the PHRF number is significantly out of whack? Just cause I suck at sailing doesn't mean the DPN should change...

wait, isn't Ding one of those database gurus? and he started this thread!

Jay, you seem to be using PHRF and DPN interchangably here?

All, the ONLY way to get a chance of getting anything to change at US Sailing is to come with a full plan and proposal. The website stuff is very difficult, as they have to spend money, and have very few internal reaources, and tons of competing priorities. We want all sorts of modernization, across the organization, including remote testing for ROs and judges, through ratings systems and scoring integration. It's all important, but not well funded or prioritized. Quitting is not going to change that...

Mike

PHRF is a parameter (ideally) and politically (by and large) set system. It is also setup, and can wildly vary, by geographical region as well. You can lobby for a higher or lower number and it tends to get very political. I would say there are probably fewer people happy with it than DPN (except those that accept handicap racing for what it is).

In my opinion, PHRF would not be an improvement. SCHRS (http://www.schrs.com/) is the strongest alternative to be considered next to DPN because it was developed for small catamarans.

edit; oh, and Texel should be considered as well.

BTW, this is the first sure sign of spring. These threads come up each year, nothing happens, then everyone gets busy with actual racing. Will this be the year we break the mold?

Mike

No