Spring Series Personal Handicap Pursuit

Published 08:05 on 29 Mar 2024

Pursuit Race with Personal Handicap

This applies to Saturday Pursuit Race only.

The current series ends this weekend.

The new Spring series commences the following weekend.

It has been suggested that a race with a personal handicap may have several advantages including.

Making it more interesting racing for upcoming sailors,

Giving the better sailors a challenge of catching those starting earlier,

Giving less experienced sailors an increased chance of spending time amongst more experienced sailors.

Encouraging increased participation leading to more sailors qualifying for the race series.

Giving different people a chance to lead racing.

Fun.

How will it work

Each sailor will be given a handicap rating based upon their results over the previous few seasons. This is scientific and will be fairly applied.

New sailors or those without previous results will start at a time closest to their boat national handicap.

The pursuit race will start as usual 10, 5 , 4, 1, go.

Start signals will follow at 1 minute intervals, your personal handicap will indicate your start minute. This will be rounded up or down depending upon which is nearer to your handicap time. This means that different types of boat will be starting at the same time and it will be up to the sailor to know which time that you will be starting at.

Start times will be available at the OOD box and be available when signing on.

The personal Handicap that you start the season with will be the handicap that is used for the Spring series. Personal Handicaps may be reviewed at the end of each season.

Other Changes to the Pursuit Race

The datum boat will change from the laser 4.7 to the Fusion. The reason for this change is to permit the increasing number of newer sailors to race a club Fusion. The effect of this is to push start times backwards by around 3 minutes. In order to balance the sailing time the race will be extended by 5 minutes to 70 minutes meaning that sailors have the same sailing time as previously.

The finish will work as it does now and this should mean that sailors will know where they have finished as the race ends.

It is hoped that Mark Reddington will give a presentation on handicaps and how they are calculated on a Wednesday evening in April with a bar facility.

Last updated 14:02 on 16 April 2024