Understanding your race results

The platform crew (Officer of the Day, Starter and Timekeeper) record your finish times - you'll know you have finished when they wave a white flag as you cross the line, and also the first in each class gets a hoot.

Results are usually processed in the next day or two.

After the results are processed by the handicapper the official race report is posted on the club website under the "Racing" tab.

Under the "Results" heading, click on the current season link - this takes you to Google Drive. Double-click on the folder for the race day, then Starters' and Timekeepers' Report: (yyyymmddStatTime.txt)

On the left side you'll see the 'line' placings and times. On the right you'll see the handicap times and placings. Once you have finished one race, you get a handicap - beginners have a high handicap, from 1.1 to about 1.3, while experienced sailors may have 0.9 to 1.0. This handicap is divided into your yardstick-corrected line time to give a handicap time and, if the handicaps work as intended, it makes the handicap race very even - anyone can win.

The right side also shows handicap points. If you win on handicap, you get about 100 points (details are in the Sailing Instructions). If you are close behind the winner, you still get nearly 100 points, and anyone finishing within about 4 minutes of the winner gets more than 50 points. If you are second, even if you are a long way behind the winner, you get at least 75 points. So there are lots of ways to get good points. You also get points for club duties such as helping on the platform and in the powerboats; so you don't miss out if you do duty. These points go towards a handicap total over the season (the Race Report also shows your current total). The person with the most points gets the biggest trophy, and typically there are trophies for anyone with more than about 400 points over the season.

There are columns on the Race Report for line points and total too. These are for the 6 Championship Heat days during the season. On those days, there are points for the yardstick-corrected line placings, as well as the handicap points. Those who are the fastest sailors get the most line points. Over the 12-18 races (with a discard of the worst 5 or 6), these points decide who are the club champions - the best sailors in each class.

Getting these results correct, recognising your achievements and rewarding you with points, depends on the platform staff recording times carefully and on you signing on and off! The sign-on sheet is the only place where skippers' names are recorded - the platform staff work on sail numbers only. So it's vital that you sign on, and write your name clearly. Signing on and off is also an important safety procedure, to check on who is on the water and off. Also, if you don't sign on and off, according to the Racing Rules, you are disqualified. Finally, please check the results once they are posted. Occasionally errors creep in - if the report says someone was ahead of you and you know they were not, let us know!

The other files in the race day folder are:

The Handicap Points Summary (yyyymmddHPoints.txt) - shows your total points from placings after handicaps are added, and your current handicap, plus details of both.

The Championship Points Summary (yyyymmddCPoints.txt) - shows your points from each championship race, and total points, plus discards.

These and other FAQ's are explained in more detail below.

Who gets the points - skipper or crew?

The skipper. Sorry, crew, but this is the way the system has been since before 1983 - maybe a future version will change it. It's typical of sailing systems, and quite unfair on the crew. A good crew will help with sail trim and boat balance, keep a lookout for other boats with right of way, watch for better wind and tide and generally help with race tactics. But for the now, it's the skipper who gets the points, so make sure you sign on correctly.

What if I change to another boat?

The handicap is attached to the skipper - it's a measure of your skill (with the assistance of crew) in sailing that type of boat. So, if you change to another boat of the same class, your handicap moves with you. If you move to another class, where we don't know how you compare with the other sailors in that class, you need to establish a new handicap for that class. If you return to your old class, your old handicap awaits you.

But, since 2012, we have grouped classes into two larger groups - the Senior and Junior classes. Within those groups, Australian Sailing yardsticks are used to correct raw line times, giving theoretically equal results despite different boats. So now you only need to establish another handicap if you move from one of the Senior classes to one of the Juniors, or vice versa.

While on the subject of getting a handicap: you need to finish one race. Your finishing time on that race, compared with the others, gives you your initial handicap. As you sail in that class, the system learns more about your ability and your handicap becomes more accurate. In the first few races, it may bounce around a bit.

What is the Ydstk and Corr?

The "Ydstk" column in the race results refers to yardstick. We assume that all boats of a single class are roughly equal (not strictly true - a newer or better maintained boat may perform better than supposedly identical boats). But if boats of different classes sail together, how can we allow for their different performance? This happens at Oxley in the combined Senior and Junior classes.

The Yardstick is a number which indicates how fast a particular class of boat is expected to sail in average conditions. A list of yardsticks, compiled from a lot of race results, is published by Australian Sailing. The current (2020-2021) list says a Laser has a yardstick of 114, while a Mirror has a yardstick of 143. This means that a Laser is expected to sail about 25% faster than a Mirror - that's why we sail the Lasers in Senior and Mirrors in Junior, and usually have a shorter course for Junior.

But a Pacer has a yardstick of 127.5, only 12% faster than a Mirror, and we have decided to sail them together in the same Junior race. So will the Pacer will always win? No, to make it fair, the Pacer's time should be multiplied by 1.12 to give a time equivalent to a Mirror sailed with the same skill.

This is shown by the Ydstk column, which shows the yardsticks of the two different boats, and the "Corr" or Corrected time column which gives the time after dividing by the yardsticks (scaled by 100). (So in fact, both Pacer and Mirror times are corrected, but the combined effect is the required 12%.)

Over the years we have tinkered with yardsticks to recognise perceived inequities - the yardsticks are largely derived from typical bay sailing. Lately we have refrained from doing this, and it seems to be working fairly well. In addition, 'pure' class reports show results for just Lasers, Impulses, etc - ie boats truly of the same class.

What is the Handicap Points Summary report for?

As explained previously, the points you gain from your handicap place in each race (plus club duty points) go towards the handicap total over the season, and hence trophies. But the Race Report shows only the points scored, and current totals, for those who sailed that day.

The Handicap Points Summary report shows everyone who has gained any handicap points in the class this season. For each skipper, it shows:

Their current handicap points total
How that total is derived from 'performance' (race placings and times) and club duties
Their average performance points per race sailed
Their current handicap
How that handicap is made up of 'performance' (race times) and win penalties

What's a Win Penalty?

The basic idea of a handicapping system is to make everyone 'equal'.

First we apply yardstick corrections so that sailing a faster type of boat does not make any difference. Then we add on handicaps, so that being a better sailor on average does not make any difference. This means that on a given day, whoever tries a little harder, or is a bit more strategic, has the best chance of a win or place and the big points.

However, some time in the dim past, it was decided that this could leave some sailors with little reward for a lot of hard trying (and in those days, trophies were awarded for each race, not on the season total). So, to make it a bit unequal (!), each time someone wins on handicap they are given a 'win penalty' of 0.005, subtracted from their real (performance) handicap. 0.005 is about 1/80 of the total handicap range.

[For the old hands, you will remember the win penalty being 3 minutes; that was when we had additive, not multiplicative, handicaps, and fewer, longer races, with proportionally larger handicaps. When we moved to multiple short races on a day, it was reduced to 1 minute. The multiplier variation of 0.005 is chosen to be roughly equivalent, and being a multiplier it automatically adjusts between long and short races.]

It's questionable how relevant this is in the current order, but tradition dies hard. So the final column of the Handicap Points Summary report shows how your handicap is made up of the performance component (i.e. how well you have sailed) and how much is penalty. Comparing the penalty values also shows how well the system (or plain good luck) has spread the wins around.

John Hynd Feb 2021