hey people
i am just wondering if there is something we can do to promote new ideas? is there somthing you would like to see? talk about ? the pub is there just to gab. but here we can talk about specific things.
I for one would like to think about how to organize a race between different classes. does anybody have any idea? how do you run a IOM against a us 1 meter and a seawind?
cougar
long live the cup and cris dickson[:-angel]
The only way that I have ever seen different classes of boats race together with any real chance of being equal, was to have everyone sail everyone elses boat once and then total the numbers. Of course if you have 3 boats… one VERY fast class, one average class and one very slow class… then the results are going to be the same each time.
The other way was to “bid” a handicap. The way that was done was to offer the boats with a handicap and then allow the skippers to pick what they want. Imagine if there is one chunk of cake left… how do you divide it? Simple, one person cuts it into two pieces, and the other gets to pick which piece they want… thereby providing the incentive to split it as exactly in two as possible.
So… you let one skipper assign the handicaps to the boats, and let the other skippers pick what they think will be the winning combination. It is best to run a few timed trials to give some ideas first. Then, each skipper gets to take his turn providing the “spread” and the other skippers (in reverse order of finishing… while omitting the one doing the handicapping) get to pick which boat/handicap combo they chose. As long as you don’t have too many boats this can work out reasonably well.
there is also the problem of running monohull’s with multihull’s. The monohull sailors over here have a real problem coming to grips with how quickly multi’s excellerate.
Monohull’s get run over constantly because they try to cross multi’s and find out very quickly just how slow mono’s are.
The only real way to do it is to have someone there to time the first three boat’s of each class. Then run them off on handicap’s. The slowest class first and so on.
The idea of timing the first three boat’s of each class is to avoid the idea of one boat being much faster than the rest in that class.
It then should come down to the first boat across the line being the winner.
Courses need to be designed to suit all classes involved. They can’t be to long or to short and mustn’t advantage or disadvantage one class over the other’s. It is something that is very hard to do, but with a lot of help and time it can be done.
Cougar,
You asked two questions. to paraphrase:
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What can we do to get more discussion going?
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How do you race different boats together?
In answer to question #1, there are two responses. The first is to wait for guys to ask questions. This is valid and as you can see from the one active discussion on the New Member’s Cat, a lot of new things that have never been discussed before on this board are being presented with a decent amount of technical detail. The second way is to present new ideas and let everyone respond. no one is doing this right now because the last guy that did this was kicked off the board because others felt this was considered advertising. Since those wounds are still fresh in everyone’s mind, I think it will take a little while before people feel it is safe to go back into that water. It is pretty normal for there to be a lull after a storm like that. I’m sure things will return to normal after a while…
In response to your second question, we have discussed handicapping systems on this board before. The big trouble with any handicapping system is that you have to correct the finish times to correct for the speed differences. This of course means that you have to keep track of finish times which is a lot of overhead for the race committee.
You can take the time out at either end of the race. I know many clubs that take it out at the start. You allow the slower boats to start earlier and since the starting tape reads off the time for you, it makes for a lot less work for the race committee. But this only works for a time over distance handicapping system. You woul dneed to set a fairly well know length course to make sure that the handicap headstarts were appropriate. If you do a time over time handicap, then giving the boats a head start will not work since you don’t know at the start of the race how long the race will take…
Another way to handle things it to set longer courses for the faster boats. I have seen races where there is a small triangle inside a larger triangle. The slower boats sail the smaller triangle and the faster boats sail the larger triangle. This requires a decent amount of precision in setting the marks and a decent knowledge of how big the course is that you have set. This can be difficult to do, but I have seen some people pull it off.
Another idea that I have seen done, but tends to cause a lot of problems is to have the faster boats do a circle around each mark as they round it. This seems to equalize some of the speed difference, but creates a nightmare when you consider that as you are coming into a mark rounding there might be a boat who is doing a circle around the mark. What a mess!!! But if you only have a few boats on the water, this can be a simple wat to equalize the speed differences.
Anyway, there are a lot of hanidcapping ideas that folks are playing with. I’d like to see the AMYA step up to the plate and organize a system that could be used at all ponds. I think this would be a great project for the open class secretary and could be a great way to promote more fun sailing outside of the one design arena that we have now…
- Will
Will Gorgen
How to get different classes to race together? Put them on the line and start. It really is that simple. Handicapp systems will only adjust placing, they don’t allow boats of vastly different speeds to be able to sail/race/compete on a racecourse together. If the boats aren’t roughly the same performance level they don’t have a lot of contact and there isn’t much fun. An IOM, a US1M, and a 36/600 are all close enough in speed to race together. A Seawind will be left in the dust. Even starting at different times doesn’t work. Once the faster boats catch up, the slower ones are rapidly left behind.
On the other point, I strongly disagree that anyone got kicked off this board for presenting “new ideas”. Don’t confuse ideas with personalty. Doug Lord was banned from the principal r/c sailing boards for his very, bad behavior and conduct, not his ideas.
I suppose the question really boils down to what it means to be “sailing together”. As Roy points out, handicapping only adjusts your finishing place and does not necessarily keep you on the same place on the racecourse as the other boats.
We had some seawinds starting with the US1Ms in our club for a while. They were really not able to keep up but there were 3 of them so they had their own “mini race” within the bigger 1 meter race. We all had fun I suppose.
So, Cougar, It really does boil down to what you want to accomplish. do you want to have nice close competitive racing? If so, you are going to have to keep all the boats very close in speed. If you just want to have the seawinds feel included by scoring them with the other boats, then a handicapping system might be the way to go.
With regard to Doug. There were a lot of people who would reply to his threads with sentiments along the lines of “Another Microsail Infomercial”. It was made pretty crystal clear that people on this board did not want to hear about Doug’s latest ideas unless he could put them on the water and prove that they were better and faster than current state of the art. It seems pretty clear to me that is the litmus test around here for discussing your latest ideas: Don’t even bring it up until it is sailing. Otherwise you are likely to take a bashing. The one exception to this is if you are building a Mistral. At which point it is perfectly acceptable to discuss it as you build it.
Now, if I am over reacting here, I appologize. It may have been that people were beating on this point because it was the easiest thing to point to (the real problem was deeper under the skin). But I think a lot of people (including myself and several others - not just Doug) were given a lot of flack about being all talk and no show when it came to new ideas. So I for one am reluctant to discuss my ideas unless it is directly relevant to a question that someone has asked. I’ll show them off when they are done…
- Will
Will Gorgen
Will
I for one would love to hear any new ideas, especially yours, as you seem to be an intelligent person who would probably have decent ideas. Present your idea, discuss it for a while and then use it or put it on the shelf, don’t go on about year after year, but please, present your ideas. This goes for everone. There is no such thing as a bad idea but there is tiring ones. Should be my first and last comment one this subject.
Thanks
Don
Vancouver Island
“Under the skin” or in the shadow is very much what got MR. Lord Banned. There is a long list of nasty emails/pms/posts that where never seen by general members, that moderators where able to catch. After repeated warnings Chad finally decided that enough was enough.
There is nothing wrong with new ideas; I for one as a moderator encourage them. Will you have provided a very good example of how to act when presenting new ideas. You respect individual?s right to disagree with you. You don?t start insulting there intelligence and you don?t send vulgar e-mails. If Mr. Lord had acted in this manor, he would still be a member of the forum.
Moderator
Dan Sherman
I agree completely with Will… I am breaking ground in new areas weekly, and I am just busting to talk about some of the new things that are going on… but I know that the first thing that is going to come back to me is:
When can I get one
How does it work
What does it cost
Can I see pics
…and I am just flat not ready to let these things go. So until things can be done to the satisfaction of all you just can’t. It is all smoke and mirrors until then. [:-angel]