Hello everyone,

This year the F18's SCHRS rating went down from 1.001(it was around 1 for many years) to 0.966! On my opinion it is a huge difference and happened just in one year. Now it is even lower than F18 HT class which has a rating of 0.978!

Why did this happen and do you think that it is fair? Suddenly they realized after many years that the F18's are os fast? Or is it because the new F18's (wildcat,C2, infusion mk2) finally proved to be so much faster than the old ones(tiger, capricorn, nacra F18 etc)?

In my races(club racing with different cats so we use the SCHRS) my tiger has usually similar speed and angle to the hurricanes upwind and downwind. Up to now we had also similar rating but this year it is very difficult to compete on the corrected time.

Any opinions or thoughts on this matter?

Christos

I think the rating worldwide was static for a long period during which development in other platforms was stagnant, yet the F18 development continued at a steady pace. While 0.966 may seem aggressive, let's see how it pans out before before getting too upset about it. The vast majority of F18 racing is still between F18s, where the rating matters not at all.

It doesn't matter what method a handicap system is based on at the end of the day comes down to a group of people sitting in a room going, these guys are too fast so we have to adjust their number. SCHRS is just another form of PHRF posing as a measurement system.

Check out the Hobie 21 rating, those are the guys that should be howling. Yeah SCHRS is as dysfunctional as all the rest. Pick you're poison and go sailing preferably straight up and if you can't do that make sure the scenery is nice.

Seriously Schneider I don't know what you see in handicap racing, it's pure hokum.

Am I that old that I sail to improve my skill, not necessarily to pick up a pickle dish? Now that I think of it, none of the very few pickle dishes I have were from handicap racing.

Now I'm put off.... I could have gotten a better rating and stroked my fragile ego with loads of handicap awards!

What's the current rating beater? ARC22TR?

Reason for the change: http://www.schrs.com/img/pdf/SCHRS_Improvements_2012_updated_29_4_2012.pdf

F16=rating beater. Ish. They've fixed some of that too. The F18 rating drop is not really unexpected, they've been sailing at the same pace as the N20 in most conditions for a few years and the N20 has a 0.94 rating.

Blah blah blah. The N20 fleet has been hemoraging talent for the last seven years, and that's why the fleet is getting school'd. Yeah, yeah different rig and sails... peanuts it is. If it's such a cake walk get on an F18 and prove me wrong! A blind one armed monkey can make an F18 go fast, right?

OMFG, they are hadicaping the sailors and not the rig! Mother F@#kers! SCHRS is PHRF.

18: The F18 will suffer a 3.4% penalty against some other boats. It is hit by the
increased dagger-board penalty, its square top mainsail and the bigger spinnaker
penalty. This is a significant change, but still smaller than the 5% change suggested by
the French performance data. The F18 may lose a lot of top sailors to the new Olympic
catamaran, in which case performance will fall. If this penalty is thought to be too high it
can in future be reduced by scaling down the impact of dagger board length.

Interesting...But the excuse of the SCHRS doesn't cover me.The F18's up to now, didn't have square top mains??didn't have big spinnakers?I am not sure about the daggerboards(I have the impression that the new infusion has big daggerdboards) but still all these years, couldn't they realize how fast(or not) are the F18's?

I agree with David in this."The F18 may lose a lot of top sailors to the new Olympic
catamaran, in which case performance will fall. If this penalty is thought to be too high it
can in future be reduced by scaling down the impact of dagger board length." This is the most stupid excuse(and future planning) from the part of SCHRS. Now we should all pray that the good F18 sailors will move this year to the Olympic Nacra...if they find a good female partner!!!

I fear this will drive the F18 class even more to be closed events and won't allow other boats on the start line. This is a trend I see happening in NA and this is bad news. For most fleets across NA there just aren't enough boats to have an F18 start and an open start for other spin boats. For larger events, F18 NAs sure its an F18 start only but for local club racing this will hurt the sport if people keep doing this.

So you folks out there know who you are.. at local events do not force the RC to have an F18 only start..you are only hurting the sport. just my 2 cents.

Two words: "Aqua Cat"

I think everyone agrees that racing on rating isn't as good as a one design fleet BUT the there are a lot of other boats out there that want to race. What are you going to do when a Prindle 19 or Nacra 20 shows up? Turn them away? Tell me how that is good for the sport.

What we do here is to have an open start and then 2 scoring methods..one with everyone and then one with just the F18s. It is a compromise but it works.

Once again Dave demonstrates his utter and willful ignorance of the real world and gets it completely wrong.

The way it works... is this...
Race Data are collected... Lots of French race data this time. SCHRS understands that race data is collected from real sailors and fleets are not equal in skill.

The measurement formula was evaluated as to how well the real world data fit the formula projection.

The formula was optimized to fit the data..

So... ONE formula out of many evaluated was chosen... EVERY current MULTIHULL design is measured and the numbers run through the formula... The table is generated.

Dave misleads by confusing PHRF which evaluates an individual design within a region and creates a unique rating in a table.

(FYI, Key West and Charlston have LARGE handicap monohull fleets where a single boat equals the value of boats at our regattas.)

with .... an individual SCHRS formula being applied to every multihull design's measurements (AND their variations if they get measured) and computes a new table for 2012.

(FYI the French have regattas with 80-90 boats racing on SCHRS handicap in a single start!)

The revision is known to have issues with F16's in particular. The TABLE (and its underlying published formula) was better then the old one... I voted to adopt it as the US representative. As did Olive Boyon sp?? of the F18 class.

Have a specific issue and some race data... email me.

Pitchpole Dave's suggestion that small one design F18 starts are death to sailing is spot on.... Small#s of ANY one design starts are death in a year or so. Split the fleet into old school and new school designs ... set different length courses and go SCHRS racing....

ps... how many one design fleets have you personally seen fall apart! ...

So the F18's think they are hard done by under SCHRS.

The F18's have developed a long way in recent years and the new handicap number is just representing that fact. If anyone has an older design then the SCHRS is set up to not penalise them, at any stage you can get your boat measured and almost certainly if you have short dagger boards and an old fashioned pintop style sail + your hull is around the 200lbs, then you almost certainly will have a higher rating then a more modern boat.

Do at least give it a go in getting an individual rating for your boat, you maybe pleasantly surprised.

Mark,

it 's clearly not a PHRF but of course the calculating formula is not objective, even if it is applied in every boat as you said. Nobody really knows if the daggerboard length is truly responsible(and how much) in the overall performance of a boat. It is a formula made to produce a pre-determined result and help some boats when will not help others. If the best sailors were in other boat categories, maybe the French would agree that F18's are not faster.

However, the SCHRS system is a "necessary bad" as we say in Greece. Unfortunately here there are very few cats. In our races, which are of course only club races, we have only 2 F18's(tigers and not new F18's), 1 tornado, 1 A class, 1 F18 HT, 6 hurricanes, and 2 hobie 16's, so it is obvious that we can only have mixed races ans use the SCHRS. The truth is that all participants of our race agreed not to follow the SCHRS new handicaps but go with the old ones for this year until seeing what the SCHRS decide for next year, recognizing that the new ratings will "hurt" our competition.For example we see that tigers and hurricanes have very similar performance in the water, but now the handicap difference is big. Or how is possible an F18 to be faster than an F18 HT(higher mast, lighter etc..)

In our occasion, the new handicap will discourage new entering sailors to buy an F18 for our races. They most probably go for an old and cheap hurricane...On my opinion these new decisions are a hit for the F18's in countries/regions with few boats.

Christos

Christos

Take the time to measure your boat accurately and then submit it to SCHRS, you may be pleasantly surprised how the older boats will have a different handicap to the latest with deep boards and square top.

The Texel rating and the SCHRS provided nearly the same result for a while. I'm just wondering whether the Texel will follow the SCHRS adjustment or not...

Christos

All measurement systems take their formula and test it on real world results. How much the formula is tweaked to fit real world results is a judgement call. But the system is objective... and transparent...
How close to the TRUTH are we.... well that is conversation about philosophy best left at the bar. (Debating a Greek over the principles of Plato and Socrates should be fun )

A necessary bad...

Well... I would say... it is necessary. The new Nacra 17 hits the market in a few months. Where do you expect these sailors to race? As the Olympic boat.... there will be racing organized by ISAF at Grade 1 events... What happens when one of the boats gets resold to a regional sailor and he shows up to your regatta and wants to play. Without an open handicap class, these boats are just not welcome. In Greece, it sounds like the F18 class has not taken off. The Nacra 17 will fare no better.... SCHRS is necessary.

Mark,

Rating system is necessary for local fleet to race together.

First, rating is only an approximation, what about difference between light wind and breeze ?
Considering only potential power is not avalaible when some boat are overpowered and some other not.
Powerful cats paid twice when breeze: first time on the water (not too easy to stay on this furious horse), second time in the computer when calculating the "corrected" time.

A detail, the same rating when the end of race is downwind or upwind ? oooops
Who care about one leg upwind ?

On long race distance rating is a joke.
Last year Nacra 20 at the Corsaire, were more than half an hour in front of other C1 (Viper etc...).
How to compare seriously when you do not have the same wind ?

A necessary bad .... is a good description.

For your info, the SCHRS never test the formula on real world.
It was only calculation based on measurable dimension of boat.
A necessary bad, but not so bad system, with two major difficulties:

-the weight crew, 75 kg per crew, is for calculation only.
That means, by the way, that only F18 were correct with the formula.
And 10 kg on the boat means approximatively 1% in the formula so 36 second an hour, team at 120 kg gain 1 minutes 48 seconds on an hour race, what about sport ?

-no real control system. Who's checking ?
Have you ever seen a protest based on false rating or modified boat.
Indeed there is no big deal if rating is for local races. No high sport interest.

Second, the change that included performance in the rating is a very strange thing.
It is now an handicap system. The same system for the horse races to increase hazard in the result.
Here the equality is scheduled for the end of the race.

This kind of rating will be mathematically perfect (not philosophy) when all the boats cross the finish at the same corrected time.
Very strange race indeed.

The french MNA postponed the application of this kind of system 2 years ago.
French sailors prefer the old "only calculation on measurable dimension" SCHRS and struggled against this kind of system (not only at the bar ;-), because the figures where not enough serious nor deep and the philosophy is not fully sportmanship.
The F18 fleet is active and strong so let's handicap F18 people !
That is a not a good spirit for cat developpment.

Now the SCHRS is the place of the battle.
Not Plato or Socrates, more Staline versus Churchill here.

When you're sailing on a F18, that does not mean you're sailing like Besson, Backès, Hermskeerk, Visser, Begeman.
And with this performance system there is part of top european F18 sailors in your rating.

Cherry on the cake your rating will change every year at the "light of experience".

SCHRS is necessary for local race (and orphans cats in main event).
But the formula of the rating need to be a "cristal clear" one.

Franck

I would encourage you to read the documentation provided by SCHRS for the 2012 revision. You seem to be about two years out of date....

In fact the problems with the real world use of the measurement rule led the french to actively participate in the modifications to the table published in 2012.

For your info, the SCHRS never test the formula on real world.
It was only calculation based on measurable dimension of boat.
A necessary bad, but not so bad system, with two major difficulties:

This is not true.... both SCHRS and Texel check their formula against real world results... The rating is only derived from measurable dimensions and the formula is adjusted. The formula is crystal clear because it is public and uniformly applied. The effect of weight, windspeed, boat weight and fleet strength are legit issues and the committee makes tradeoffs to match the formula's accuracy to the real world as best as possible. We have no tablets from God as to the divine formula. Your major issue is the Sport of the game. Handicap racing will not be as accurate... the precision of the handicap game is not the same. The 2012 SCHRS table is IMO fair. Where you use handicap racing depends on many factors.

RE SCHRS and F18s and Sport
In the USA, we have few regions that get a critical mass of F18's on the starting line for that regions major regattas. We are not as fortunate as you euro's... Pitchpole and myself argued that racing on handicap at both local and regional events will get a larger fleet of boats racing and this is preferable to 2 or three boat one design starts. In the end... we need every boat on the line we can so that we cover the costs of regattas. Pitchpole and myself believe that two or three boat One design classes (which we will run) don't maintain interest or grow the sport in our regions.

This is where I have the biggest issues with the determination of a boats handicap rating. "Fleet strength" should have NOTHING to do with a boats rating. A boat should be rated to its optimum potential, not the potential of the sailors sailing the boat. The N20 is a perfect example of this. Just because the top tier of sailors that were once sailing that boat have left the class does not mean that the boat is any slower. On the flip side, should the F18's rating be lowered, certainly. If the sailors are showing that there is more potential in the boat than was previously rated, the rating should lower. Although, once lowered, it should never be raised again if the talent leaves the fleet as the boat did not get any slower.