Racing a Sonar Under PHRF

[dmurcott]

I am interested in everyone''s opinion on how a sonar would do racing PHRF on Long Island Sound. There is a local Sonar Fleet, but they race on every weekend, and that is not viable for me. I want to do the Wed night beer can races. I don''t need to win every race, but I don''t want to be lapped either. The rest of the boats are much larger: Pearson Flyer, X99, CC99, Olsen 30 and a J24.

[Jeff_H]

I do not see a PHRF rating for the Sonar on LIS. Some regions have minimum accommodation standards and boats like the Sonar and a One design equipped J-22 might not meet that standard and so are not rated. I am saying that is definitely the case with LIS and the Sonar.

Otherwise a Sonar should do about as well as a J-22 or J-24 under PHRF.

Jeff

[dmurcott]

It''s there, the rating is 174. The same as a J-24.

[sailingfool]

My experience is that one-designs can do fine in PHRF and the Sonar would seem like an excellent choice for Wednesday nights - very comfortable for a gang, small jib, easy to handle.
That said, if you want to do well, get yourself on a Sonar that wins on the weekends and soak up everything about how they make the boat go. One-design racing has the benefits of pushing the performance of the boat and the tactics of the crew to their peak - if you can figure out how make the boat perform well and win in one-design, then you should be able to clean up in PHRF.

[paulk]

We had a Sonar race in our fleet on Long Island Sound on Wednesday nights. Since the PHRF fleet raced sans spinnaker (to make it simpler for more people to race on the bigger boats), the Sonar couldn''t sail to its rating. The long courses made for extremely late finishes for the Sonar - when they didn''t have to paddle in from having the wind die on them after the rest of the fleet had finished. It was an extremely frustrating experience for the owner, who sold the boat. In a different fleet, with boats like J/24''s more closely matched to the Sonar''s rating, with it might work out better.