Hi, We are running a dinghy handicap series and a competitor has changed boats from a single hander to a 2 hander. I want to show his entry in the series without splitting the entry. How do I change the boat but preserve the previous races with the correct handicap?
Thanks
Hi,
To change the handicap for a race and subsequent races, right click the competitor race cell and select “Edit result” then select the Rating tab. On this tab enter the rating for the double handed class and check the box “Use until the next rating is specified”.
I would add a note to the results or the competitor and publish the note saying something like “Changed class to … starting with Race#”.
I hope that al makes sense.
Kind regards,
Huw
Thanks. Perfect Just what I needed.
Just a reminder for anyone following this issue. The defaults under the
rulebook are:
What is entered in an event is a boat (though it is entered by a person).
What is scored in an event is a boat (though it is sailed by one or
more competitors).
You can, of course, change these in your NoR and SIs. If no one
complains then not a problem but if someone questions the scoring you’d
have to follow the rulebook unless appropriately changed in the NoR and SIs.
I believe Sailwave follows the rulebook and scores by boat so you’d have
to do some fudging to get what you want, though it is certainly possible.
Art
If a boat changes its rig (Laser vs Laser Radial) mid series…
How would you usually score this?
Just looking at last night’s results from our club and seeing that a Laser changed to Laser Radial and has been scored separately, which is fine by me - their choice. BUT it does have the interesting effect of increasing the number of entries, and so the points for DNC/DNF etc.
Perhaps extreme example with three boats and three races with no discards:
Helm R1 R2 R3 Total
==============================
John 1 2 1 4 **WINNER**
Jane 2 3 2 7
Jack DNC 1 3 8
Helm R1 R2 R3 Total
==============================
John 1 2 DNC 9
Jane 2 3 2 7 **WINNER**
Jack DNC 1 DNC 13
Jon R* DNC DNC 1 13
Jac R* DNC DNC 3 15
Now add a single discard
Helm R1 R2 R3 Total
==============================
John 1 2 [DNC] 3 **WINNER**
Jane 2 [3] 2 4
Jack [DNC] 1 DNC 7
Jon R* [DNC] DNC 1 7
Jac R* [DNC] DNC 3 9
For a single race day, you don’t keep changing the value of DNC. For a series over weeks - for casual club racing - DNC goes up as random boats appear for a single race etc. That goes up EVEN more if the same helm sails a different boat or different rig?
I’m curious if a club feels they’ve found a scoring system that actually encourages participation - thats the big issue at most clubs. So things like OOD scores. But also things like does anyone score DNF better than DNC/DNS? (feels like you made the effort… I’d prefer a DNF to be scored as boats in RACE+1 rather than SERIES+1, but perhaps it just encourages people to game results by starting and immediately retiring). I’ve heard arguments to keep discards low to encourage people to come and get points even if weather not great, and arguements to keep them high because - life gets in the way… We know 70% of our members are non-plussed by the results at all! But the 30% who care may be encouraged to play more if they feel the scoring doesn’t penalise them…
Also, while I’m on a random off topic discussion! OOD - if the sailor never takes part in the series do you count them as an entry? (again increases the DNC score… which depends on what discards you are running.)
This may be obvious but the rulebook default is 'series entrants+1’for
DNF in a weekend regatta but ‘came to the starting area+1’ for DNF in a
series longer than a regatta (see RRS A9). So, the answer is ‘lots and
lots of clubs score other than entrants+1 for DNF!’
Last I checked the Hobie classes scored DNF, OCS, DSQ like the long
series rules of A9 with the idea that boats that bother to at least
attempt to race should get better scores than boats that never leave the
beach (and thus are DNC aka Did Not Come to the starting area).
At least one class (Snipes) used to score DNF as ‘number of
finishers+X’. I think they used 1 but that isn’t a good number to use
because a last place boat will get the same score whether or not they
finish so there is every incentive to drop out. Better is ‘finishers+2’
so there is some slight incentive to keep racing.
My own view is that the way to have less of a penalty for not sailing is
to increase the number of discards. The default is 1 but I would say
that is far too few for a long series. Locally our long series has 3
discards after 15 races and I would be inclined to increase that to 4
discards after 18 or 19 races.
Alternatively, there are some scoring systems that calculate a boat’s
score as the percentage of the score she would have gotten if she’d won
every race she raced in. With such a system you must have a minimum
number of races for it to work effectively. I don’t like that kind of
system for two reasons: i) it is harder for competitors to understand
(95%+ cannot do the math themselves) and ii) if a boat has good scores
after doing the minimum number of races then they have every incentive
to sit ashore. Personally, I much prefer the discard approach since a
boat can always improve their scores and discard an earlier score. So,
there is every incentive to keep racing in every race. However, there
are good arguments that the percentage-type systems are slightly fairer,
at least in theory.
Art
Doh! Of course it does! Which discourages the pesky lasers from rig switching if we create them as new entries 
Also be aware that if you are supplying race data to the RYA PYOnline system then I believe you must record separate boats when competitors use different Class configurations and therefore handicaps. We keep them separate and upload that data to PYOnline.
At the end of the series we would run a spreadsheet routine to merge the race placings achieved by the helm rather than the boat. Our intention in doing that is to encourage people to explore different boats if they want to and also to enable someone that purchases a replacement boat with a different handicap to have all results achieved counted.
Richard