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Alright, this is going to be out there but hopefully someone has something...
My club does PHRF races weekly with several Regatta's on the weekends. The current Race committee chair is stepping down and he has always done the PHRF system. It works well enough. He sets your PHRF based on experience and it stays the same all year unless he feels the need to change it.
An example - my boat is PHRF 162 and he has me set at 180 because it's my first year racing.
His boat is a 108, and he is set as a 108 because he is capable of sailing her to potential.
We do this to keep it competitive for new folks and attract more racers.
My question: is there a dynamic system that will adapt our PHRF based on our finishes (mathematically)? So as we get further and further into the year, the finishes get closer and closer...
You could set one up, but it is not PHRF. PHRF by definition rates the boat NOT the crew. To my knowledge there is no current system that tries to rate the skill of the crew to equalize finishes, since the entire point of racing is to figure out who the best sailor is.
But what you are doing, and suggesting has been suggested for exactly the reason you mention, it makes it easier for new sailors to feel part of the action.
Statistically it is easy to figure out the distance behind in seconds/mile a boat finishes from the leader, then add that to their handicap for the next race. If you do this over every race, or series it will over time regress to the mean. So you should (but won't) get statistical ties.
You could set one up, but it is not PHRF. PHRF by definition rates the boat NOT the crew. To my knowledge there is no current system that tries to rate the skill of the crew to equalize finishes, since the entire point of racing is to figure out who the best sailor is.
But what you are doing, and suggesting has been suggested for exactly the reason you mention, it makes it easier for new sailors to feel part of the action.
Statistically it is easy to figure out the distance behind in seconds/mile a boat finishes from the leader, then add that to their handicap for the next race. If you do this over every race, or series it will over time regress to the mean. So you should (but won't) get statistical ties.
It's an interesting idea to give people time for their 1st year racing and I can see how it might help get others out on the course. Is the added time a percentage of the base rating (10%)? Feels like after the first year, the 'new racer handicap' should go away. Our Club runs a separate series of races that use a pursuit start based on each boat's PHRF. In theory, all boats should finish in about the same time (discounting any variation in wind, current, sailing ability and a lot of other variables, so no -- it never happens). It's a fun way for race for those who are new to racing and eliminates the drama at the start which intimidates a lot of new racers.
It was suggested at our club one time (and quickly voted down) that winning a race should lower your rating to allow others to be more competitive next time. What?!? Talk about a disincentive. People who race well do so because they work at it -- they practice, they study, focus and have great crew. Penalizing them for their success is ridiculous. Observing others who sail better than you do is a great way to learn -- where on the line did they start? What line did they take to the windward mark? What about mark roundings? What was their course on the downwind leg?
Never been an advocate of the "everybody gets a medal" mindset, but I support ideas to get more people out on the water. I know of another club that runs practice start events to give new racers an opportunity to practice starts with other boats -- they set up a line and run a series of start sequences so racers can practice, fine-tune and get a feel of what it's like to charge the line with other boats all trying to occupy the same spot on the water. Other clubs do 'adopt a cruiser' events, where they put experienced racers as crew on boats with those new to racing. With the right people it can be a blast.
If you have a whole season's worth of results, I suppose you could back-calculate the various ratings to the same average corrected time.. and maybe try those ratings for the next season.
But I think you'll find that, while some will appreciate the shift, more will find it unfair and unnecessary.
It would be an interesting experiment. You could do the math and run the results in the background for a while to see how it would have worked out, and how much it changed the traditional results.
You're new, you are supposed to be inexperienced and likely to come in last. And, to be excited at the prospect of learning and moving up in the ranks as you accomplish more.
No need to fiddle the numbers, you'll either advance in your skills and position, or not. Along the way you'll also find out PHRF isn't fair in many ways. If you want "fair", you want one design racing, with rigid fleet rules. And the new guys will still start out by coming in last.
Then one day you come in NEXT TO LAST. And you still celebrate, because it means you moved up one!
In my first year of club one-design racing, I think we came in something like 7th or 8th in the average ten boat race, with an ever-changing crew. But, we came in 4th in the season overall ratings. Simply because we SHOWED UP and raced every time, and that counts too.
Worry about sailing faster, and let someone else worry about the numbers.
You would have to pursuit start EVERY race with the adjusted handicaps so the fast boats would take longer to catch up, never would you be "closer following" as suggested. Not changing speed just the math. Its an interesting Idea and individual clubs can implement at will, surely no mass following. We do a couple of pursuit starts in our season and the fast Boats still pass you we're just adding the handicap not the behind time as you suggest.
From someone who is in the 'conteplative' stage of joining PHRF racing, it would be most important to me that the fleet regularly voices that we will be accepted and encouraged, regardless of our horrible finishes. I would rather have our position on the water, and the final results reflect our actual PHRF placing. Then next year I will get a new suit of sweet carbon sails, and kick their butts!
Personally I would not want to have a special favorable phrf rating for around the bouy racing. When we started racing we were near the back of the pack for the first season. We worked hard and practiced every week and by year two we had moved up several places. By year three we were in the top tier of the fleet and won our first race but we had absolutely great sailors in our club (Olympic qualifiers) and that turned out to be our only win although we were near the top of the fleet for several years. One year we chose to not practice as often and we ended up back in the middle. I think you just kid yourself by changing the rules, sort of like everyone gets a metal just for showing up or no one fails in school anymore, just my opinion. Pursuit racing is always fun, never have done it on a triangle course but it's usually a good time by all.
We used a modified PHRF club rating for several seasons at our club in an effort to get more people out. It worked pretty well for that, though having our rating reduced by about 20 sec/mile made any error on our part absolutely fatal. We still had fun finishing first and working on sailing as fast as we could. Newer boats and more interest after several seasons made the "club adjustments" unneeded, and they were dropped. We now often have more than a dozen boats out on Wednesday nights, racing in spinnaker and non-spinnaker divisions. Everyone seems to have a good time. Every club is going through a different situation and needs to do what works for them.
P.S. Pursuit starts can be fun, but can be tricky if the RC needs to be on hand to make sure nobody jumps their gun by starting a second or two (or 30) early.
As a way to get everyone more 'involved and in the thick of it', I think the Pursuit start is the simplest way to go. It gives the slow boats clear air for awhile, opportunity to attempt to cover an overtaking competitor and the chance to judge and assess close port/starboard crossings.(some things you virtually never get as the 'slow' boat unless you're being lapped )
Playing with ratings can go along with that, but for a novice to steadily improve his/her/their standing through practice and perseverance with standard ratings seems to me the better way to go.
I've done some racing in a dynamic PHRF system and it works pretty well. It's a low key group. For each race the winner had 9 subtracted from rating, 2nd place 6, 3rd place 3, 4th place doesn't change, and everyone after 4th gets 2 added. Benefits are that it keeps everyone in the thick of things. If you don't have the latest and greatest sails, you can still compete even if you can't sail to your rating. And perhaps most importantly you get a bonus for coming out even if you keep losing (+2 every time you race) so there's a reason to keep coming out. Probably not good for a hard core racing crowd, but it the goal is to get people out and engaged it seems to work well. And in the end, the best sailors probably still end up winning, just not by as much as they otherwise would.
I mostly agree with you. My advise to people who ask how to be more competitive and what they should buy is always "lessons." In a qualified, competent, and competitive class you can talk me into sails, but for most club racing lessons are the best way to move up.
One Design is pretty straight forward...what can YOU do with?
Small is good for this.
The best way to get more people involved is to keep the entry cost low.....the boat, costly sails, etc. When you get away from that...low volume...
To give me 'positive points' because I was not as good and skilled as another skipper/crew that beat me sounds absurd.
It's real competition...or its not.
Some people like to play in that arena, and some not....the truth.
PHRF can work well, but we have found that local sailing politics overpowers it, around here, for decades.
To have better competition with less hassle, a local club was formed here in 1978 around the idea of one design (OD) racing. At that time three local fleets came together to incorporate the club. These were all 20 to 22 foot ballasted boats. It was really excellent racing. Since it was mostly all families, the social factor was huge too.
The club kept attracting new members who inevitably sailed larger boats with not enough to put 5 on a starting line.
Soon they added Level Fleets, where a group of boats was assigned by general performance potential... using known PHRF numbers and local knowledge. This flourished and that club is still going strong with about a hundred boats.
Given that on short course racing any tiny mistake you make at a mark will undo a considerable difference in rating numbers (!), this has provided fair racing. At least as "fair" as most all handicap racing ever is.
Best of all, you sail your boat as well as you can, and all the finishes are "WYSIWYG". When you get the horn you know exactly what you finish position is.
My club experimented with a crew handicapping system on top of the standard PHRF. I can't remember exactly where I found the suggestion (I didn't make this up), but I'm glad I wrote down how I did it because I would have never remembered:
The actual race completion time is converted to seconds per mile
The boat that finishes closest to 40% of the way down the pack is set as the scratch boat (if there were 10 boats, it would be the boat finishing 4th, for example)
The deviation from the scratch boat is calculated for all other boats in seconds per mile
The deviation for each boat is divided by 10 and the resulting number is the "Golf Handicap"
The average of the last three Golf Handicaps (aka "trailing average") is used as the boat's PHRF and a new Golf Handicap is created for the next race
It turned out that this didn't substantively change the positions. I also ran it with 20% of the deviation, and then it just made things wacky. In the end, it was all an experiment (the official scoring was still straight-up PHRF) and it was decided that it wasn't worth pursuing for another year. I didn't protest its demise too hard because it required me to build and run a database, which is the sort of thing that I'm often trying to mentally sail away from.
The SQL was horrible.
Code:
SELECT DISTINCT RaceID AS tempRaceID
INTO #raceList
FROM results
ORDER BY tempRaceID
DECLARE @ActiveRace int
--Iterate over races
WHILE (Select Count(*) From #raceList) > 0
BEGIN
--Get first raceID
Select Top 1 @ActiveRace = tempRaceID From #raceList
--Put Rank and Count into #phrfTemp Table
SELECT
raceID,
boatName,
RANK() OVER (ORDER BY phrf ASC) AS PRank,
(SELECT COUNT (*) FROM results WHERE results.raceID = @ActiveRace) AS PCount
INTO #phrfTemp
FROM dbo.results INNER JOIN
#raceList ON dbo.results.raceID = #raceList.tempRaceID
WHERE dbo.results.raceID = @ActiveRace AND dbo.results.phrf IS NOT NULL
--Put phrfRank into results
UPDATE dbo.results
SET dbo.results.phrfRank = #phrfTemp.PRank
FROM #phrfTemp
INNER JOIN dbo.results
ON #phrfTemp.raceID = dbo.results.raceID
AND #phrfTemp.boatName = dbo.results.boatName
--Calculate percentile
UPDATE dbo.results
SET dbo.results.percentile = (cast(#phrfTemp.PCount as float)-cast(#phrfTemp.PRank as float))/cast(#phrfTemp.PCount as float)
FROM #phrfTemp
INNER JOIN dbo.results
ON #phrfTemp.raceID = dbo.results.raceID
AND #phrfTemp.boatName = dbo.results.boatName
--Build #golfTemp table
SELECT
dbo.results.raceID,
dbo.results.boatName,
dbo.results.actualTime,
dbo.race.raceLength,
dbo.boat.basePHRF,
(SELECT TOP (1) dbo.results.actualTime FROM dbo.results WHERE percentile BETWEEN 0.5 AND 0.59999999999 AND dbo.results.raceID = @ActiveRace) AS scratchboat
INTO #golfTemp
FROM dbo.results
INNER JOIN dbo.race ON dbo.results.raceID = dbo.race.raceID
INNER JOIN dbo.boat ON dbo.results.boatName = dbo.boat.boatName
WHERE dbo.results.raceID = @ActiveRace AND dbo.results.phrf IS NOT NULL
--Run base golfPHRF
UPDATE dbo.results
SET dbo.results.golfHandicap = ((cast(#golfTemp.actualTime as float) / cast(#golfTemp.raceLength as float)) -
(cast(#golfTemp.scratchboat as float) / cast(#golfTemp.raceLength as float)))
* 0.1
+ cast(#golfTemp.basePHRF as float)
FROM #golfTemp
INNER JOIN dbo.results
ON #golfTemp.raceID = dbo.results.raceID
AND #golfTemp.boatName = dbo.results.boatName
--Build #last3 to store recent data for averaging
SELECT *
INTO #last3
FROM dbo.results
WHERE raceID IN
(SELECT DISTINCT TOP(3) dbo.results.raceID
FROM dbo.results
WHERE raceID <= @ActiveRace
ORDER BY dbo.results.raceID DESC)
ORDER BY dbo.results.raceID DESC
--Redo golfPHRF with trailing average
UPDATE dbo.results
SET dbo.results.golfHandicap = (SELECT AVG(#last3.golfHandicap) FROM #last3 WHERE #last3.boatName = dbo.results.boatName)
FROM #last3
INNER JOIN dbo.results
ON #last3.raceID = dbo.results.raceID
AND #last3.boatName = dbo.results.boatName
WHERE dbo.results.raceID = @ActiveRace
--Calculate golf handicapped time
UPDATE dbo.results
SET dbo.results.golf = dbo.results.actualTime - (dbo.results.golfHandicap * dbo.race.raceLength)
FROM dbo.results
INNER JOIN dbo.race
ON dbo.results.raceID = dbo.race.raceID
WHERE dbo.results.raceID = @ActiveRace
--Put Rank #golfRank Temp Table
SELECT
raceID,
boatName,
RANK() OVER (ORDER BY golf ASC) AS GRank
INTO #golfRank
FROM dbo.results
WHERE dbo.results.raceID = @ActiveRace AND dbo.results.golf IS NOT NULL
--Update golfRank field
UPDATE dbo.results
SET dbo.results.golfRank = #golfRank.GRank
FROM #golfRank
INNER JOIN dbo.results
ON #golfRank.raceID = dbo.results.raceID
AND #golfRank.boatName = dbo.results.boatName
WHERE dbo.results.raceID = @ActiveRace
DROP TABLE #phrfTemp
DROP TABLE #last3
DROP TABLE #golfTemp
DROP TABLE #golfRank
Delete #raceList Where tempRaceID = @ActiveRace
END
DROP TABLE #raceList
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