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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 747 - February 8, 2001Scuttlebutt is a digest of yacht racing news, commentary, opinions, features and dock talk . . . with a North American emphasis. Corrections, contributions, press releases and contrasting viewpoints are always welcome. GUEST EDITORIAL - Dan Nowlan, Offshore Director at US SAILING The point has been made recently in Scuttlebutt that handicap racing needs something to fill the gap between IMS and PHRF. This is a view shared by many racers. Trying to find that "right" something is the challenge, isn't it? Those of us seeking solutions started with idea that we should first look at improvements or alterations to existing rating systems familiar both racers and race organizers. In the US that system is PHRF (14,004 boats in registered fleets). The one thing apparent from PHRF race results is that a single rating number is no longer an adequate solution. The characteristics of boats racing today are too diverse. Additionally, the course sailed has become a dominant handicapping parameter. IRC is single-number, time-on-time scoring emphasizing windward leeward courses and tidal flows. For those conditions the IRC one number works well. However, the greater the deviation from this baseline, the less applicable and or accurate the handicapping results. For that reason and those cited above, IRC has not been pursued in the US as an intermediate rule. What has been done in the US is to develop two approaches. Both account for course content. Both use VPP's to construct the ratings. Both have simplified scoring. One, Ratings Plus, is intended to augment PHRF for non-standard courses and winds. The other, is a simplified measurement rule, an IMS "Light" with a secret VPP. It is AMERICAP. Ratings Plus is in the formative stages. The rating system is functional and marketing to the PHRF community has begun. Its most obvious applications are for the distance races - Mackinac Island, Newport to Ensenada, Marion to Bermuda, around Block Island. AMERICAP has existed for several years, but has suffered from lack of marketing and support. Interest by Southern California Ocean Racing Association and a fresh commitment by US SAILING has sparked renewed West Coast activity. Several Southern California seminars are planned for early March. In the East, the Marion to Bermuda fleet is all AMERICAP. Both approaches have merit, but the true test will be the response from the market place - the racers. - Dan Nowlan. VENDEE GLOBE - By Philippe Jeantot This morning life in these last days on the water was proving the most uncomfortable since the start. Desjoyeaux described the conditions: "There are these breakers which just swamp the boat completely, the sea and wind are both powerful, even a little too much. I'm managing to keep up with the low pressure system and I am constantly on watch, I'm not getting a moment's rest. Ellen MacArthur (Kingfisher) is stabilising her gap and rests still approximately 140 miles behind. Yesterday she experienced her strongest wind squall and had plenty of exhausting manoeuvres to undergo to navigate the boat through. She had to reduce sail a bit in order to recuperate overnight. "I slept nearly all night. I feel a whole lot better for catching up on rest well needed for the last few days. This morning life is definitely rosier." Ellen was talking about her race already with thoughts of what lies immediately ahead. "In my head it will be difficult to stop this story, it's been 3 months at sea, take the bus again, the train, cooking, driving; it's going to be strange, we'll have to learn everything again." - http://www.vendeeglobe.com STANDINGS: 1. PRB, Michel Desjoyeaux, 1116 miles to finish, 2. Kingfisher, Ellen MacArthu,r +145 miles, 3. Sill Matines & La Potagere, Roland Jourdain, +575, 4. Active Wear, Marc Thiercelin, +947, 5. Sodebo Savourons la Vie, Thomas Coville, +1524, 6. Union Bancaire Privee, Dominique Wavre, +1532. CUSTOMER SERVICE THE RACE - Mark Chisnell With Club Med blasting through the Southern Ocean, covering 532 miles in the last 24 hours, they will be approaching these objects at an unpleasant speed. Quilter will be spending plenty of time on radar watch, and they will be thankful that the hours of darkness are short in these latitudes at this time of year. They will also be grateful that apart from the ice, conditions for Grant Dalton and his Club Med crew have been reasonable - despite the fact that they are in almost exactly the same position in the high pressure ridge as yesterday. Dalton was unhappy about this earlier, but it's working for him at the moment. Lo•ck Peyron and Innovation Explorer have been caught in strong westerly winds to the north of the low pressure. They cannot go south after Dalton because they risk getting caught by extreme storm conditions near the centre of the low. And they don't want to go too far north, because they are adding extra miles to the course. So, as we can see from his track, Peyron is being forced to gybe downwind. And VMG running is a point of sail his doesn't have any decent spinnakers for, result; Dalton has gained more than 120 miles in the last 24 hours. * Conditions for the back half of the fleet remain average. Cam Lewis and Team Adventure continue their passage across the Great Australian Bight, amidst a swirl of isobars that refuse to form anything so significant as a weather system. They have found a little breeze and were up to 20 knots this morning, but with high pressure sitting in the Tasman Sea, their passage to Cook Strait looks like being (relatively!) slow for a while yet. - Story by Mark Chisnell, first published at MadforSailing.com and reprinted on the Quokka Sports website. Full story: STANDINGS February 8 @ 03:57 GMT: 1. Club Med, 8625 miles from finish, 2.
Innovation Explorer, +795, 3. Team Adventure, +4907, 4. Warta Polpharma,
+5815, 5. Team Legato, +6703. NOW Sports website, LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON (leweck@earthlink.net) * From: "Bruce Campbell" <bcam8@prodigy.net> With the greatest respect for Pat Seidenspinner's accomplishments in the area of race management, I would like to point out that there are 5 different possibilities in her example of the new, simpler starting system at the prep signal. While many sailors are indeed smart enough to figure the new system out, I would suggest that this is a solution to a problem that does not exist. I will be interested to see how many clubs feel the need to implement this change and how many will be including the wording that US Sailing Rules Committee has suggested to avoid such a change. Combined with the new Eligibility Code, this will keep many race committees busy writing over-rides in order to maintain the illusion that US Sailing is not losing touch with the many keelboat racers that should be served by their national body. PS: Thanks for the new membership card! * From: Larry Ehrhardt <Lwesr@aol.com> I share Chris Ericksen's (and, I am sure, many others) disappointment that US Sailing won't at least give us the option of Starting System 2. I have run many races using each system and strongly believe there are times and places for each. I assume that race committees will not be prevented from spelling out the details of whatever nonconformist system they feel appropriate for their competitors. In order to save space in sailing instructions and provide some degree of uniformity would Scuttlebutt SC be prepared to post its own prescription to the Rules which would look much like the current System 2 and could be simply incorporated by reference, e.g., Races will be started using Scuttlebutt SC System 2? CURMUDGEON'S COMMENT: I'm afraid that a reference to the SSC Starting System 2 would NOT save your bacon if the matter ever went to appeal. However it's hard for me to believe that US Sailing will not see the light on this issue and include a Starting System prescription in their new rules. If they don't, the SSC will have appropriate boilerplate available to cut and paste into your sailing instructions. * From: Giles Anderson <giles.anderson@spectrasoftware.com> (RE: Craig Fletcher's comments about trash and The Race.) - Let's not forget that some participants in The Race use the platform to promote a better understanding and respect of our oceans. During his original trip around the world in a big cat, Cam Lewis brought every piece of non-biodegradable trash back with him - quite a commitment given it's extra weight and awful smell. This time around I believe that Team Adventure is following the same tact and has even developed a school program to make it fun for children to learn about the oceans by following The Race and reading up on the places they visit and their animal inhabitants. Efforts like this are to be commended. * From: Helen Woolfenden <WoolfendeH@iata.org> With all due respect, does Mr. Fletcher drive a car (which pollutes), eat tinned food (discarded tins pollute), wash his clothes in a washing machine (which pollutes) or fly on aircraft (which also pollute)? Every human on this earth is guilty of pollution in some form however carefully we live. This is definitely not to say that pollution should be tolerated, but simply to say let us not put such ridiculous demands on the organisers of The Race but congratulate them for introducing us to a new era of an amazing technological feat. The "invention" of these incredible machines has changed the world of multihull sailing as we know it! In this world we live in, it seems easier to be negative and critical, than to praise people and to remember the much loved melody of the brilliant Monty Python Team "always look on the bright side of life..." * From Giovanni Iannucci <g.iannucci@iol.it> About the ongoing correspondence on the IRC handicap system and for the sake of completeness of information, I feel obliged to write to remind that the IMS is not only the so called "complicated system". The fact that the ORC has introduced in 1998 (somewhat late, may be) the "ORC Club", a simplified version of the IMS apparently continues to be ignored. The ORC Club rule has been specially developed to make IMS technology available to the Club sailor. Self measurement, easy scoring options, compatibility with the standard IMS and an attractive, inexpensive (cheaper than IRC, by the way), easy to understand certificate are the main features of the rule. Although only just over two years old, the ORC Club is spreading rapidly all over the world, despite very little promotion. 3270 certificates were issued in the first nine month of last year in 18 countries, a substantial increase over the 2528 issued the year before. Japan has recently joined the ORC Club family and as many as 800 certificates are expected to be issued in that country in the next two years. More countries are presently in touch with the ORC to establish their own rating office and issue ORC Club certificates to their local fleets. One last comment on Bob Fisher's letter to clarify one point which might be misleading. The IRC is indeed used in the Sydney-Hobart race, but just as one of three systems. The other two being IMS and PHS. * From: "Jack Mallinckrodt" <malli@earthlink.net> IRC and PHRF are much more alike than different. . Both have objective measurement based formulas or tables for an initiation guess, but in the end, both are subjective handicaps based on observed performance. The only important difference is that IRC uses Time-On-Time scoring while PHRF (mostly) uses Time-On-Distance scoring. There are some significant advantages to TOD: 1) Scoring is independent of distance or errors in distance. 2) Slightly simpler scoring calculation, 3) arguably less sensitive to current, 4) Only about half as sensitive to handicap errors due to off-nominal wind strengths. That last is a huge error, as much as 80 to 100 sec/mi for some boats in light winds for TOD and "only" 40 to 50 sec/mi for TOT. (The explanation and analysis deriving these numbers is on-line at <www.scora.org> click "The Inherent Error in Single Number Scoring") But even this difference can be trivially corrected. Given the PHRF handicaps, present TOD allowances can be trivially converted to TOT factors by the simple formula: TOT = S1/(S2+TOD) Where S1 and S2 are the arbitrary scratch boat constants in the TOT and TOD systems. (S2 is approximately 485 sec/mi and S1 can be set equal to S2 for same scratch boat) Rather than abandon a pretty well working PHRF handicap system for unknown grass that may only appear greaner, PHRFers would be well advised to simply convert their existing TOD time allowances to TOT factors and use TOT scoring. * From: "Robert L. Johnstone" <bobj@jboats.com> (Re the curmudgeon's observation that anything free is probably worth what you paid for it.) First order of the day is placing the downloaded/printed Scuttlebutt on the breakfast table. Then turn on the hot water kettle. Then fetch the less informative Charleston Post & Courier or Sunday New York Times. Used to be I'd get irritated for lack of sailing news in the local press. Now we've got a world of news thanks to the creativity and persistence of our own Curmudgeon. Maybe the best things in life are free! ELLEN MACARTHUR - Tim Jeffery Concentrating on Kingfisher must be difficult, for the media have been in constant contact by email and satcom phone. However, MacArthur is still not sure what to expect when she arrives in Les Sables d'Olonne, France, on Saturday where hundreds of thousands of spectators are likely to be there to welcome her home. "It will be finishing one of the most amazing experiences of my life and I'd like to remember it like that," she said. Her first 36 hours ashore will be a whirlwind of interviews and appearances in Paris and London. "You do feel that some situations are pretty hard for people to understand," she said, attempting to fathom out the huge interest in her 91 days alone at sea. "You can't really do it justice. On the other hand, sharing this project with the world is one of the amazing things about the race. I really do feel I've not been out there alone and that's very special. I wouldn't change that for anything." One week on from the collision with what was presumed to be a submerged container, MacArthur cannot be sure how much the rudder damage and lost daggerboard has harmed Kingfisher's speed. "It's very difficult to say if that is the case because the waves have been so big and handling the boat has been so difficult, but there is a piece of rudder missing and you can see the drag off it and feel the vibration. "And with a hole in the boat, there is water hosing up all the time from where the daggerboard would have been, so that's slowing us a bit." The biggest loss was the initial 40 miles squandered in recovering from the
collision: "We've never been able to catch that up again," she said. - Tim
Jeffery, Daily Telegraph, UK QUOTE / UNQUOTE * "Our speed is 27 knots and the wind speed is 35 knots. The seas are
building as we sail southeast, with a big bright moon. Basically a gorgeous
night. This is good downwind sailing at last - just as the brochure
promised. Life is good. The past two days have been refreshing - a lot less
water on deck and below. Time to dry out, clean the boat and our bodies and
listen to some tunes." - Cam Lewis (Team Adventure) - INVESTMENT ADVICE
TEAM PHILIPS CALENDAR OF MAJOR EVENTS THE CURMUDGEON'S DEFINITIONS |
