You appear to be confusing the terms Class and Fleet. The class is the type of boat, the manufacturer model, they all carry the same class insignia per Rule G1.1(a). The Fleet is the group of boats that will sail and be scored together, they can be a one design class, or different boats using a handicap or rating system.
In sound like you are putting the fleet name in the class field. The class should be BENETEAU 44.7, C&C 33, CAL 20, FARR 30, OPTIMIST, SNIPE, THISTLE, VIPER 640 etc. A boats class does not change. The fleet name should reflect the grouping of boats that are starting together; PHRF-1, Portsmouth, IRC, OPTIMIST, SNIPE, THISTLE, VIPER 640, etc.
Sailwave looks up the rating of the class you enter in the rating tables. When you change the class it looks up the rating again. If there is no rating for say PHRF 1, a blank is returned.
There are several different rating files available on the Sailwave website; US Portsmouth, PHRF, etc. Failing that you can always enter the rating / handicap yourself or make your own rating file.
Sailwave User Guide is available from http://www.abyc.org/upload/Sailwave_ABYC_User_Guide.pdf
It defines some of the basic concepts that are used in Sailwave. If you don’t understand the terminology it is easy to get confused.
Fleet – A group of boats that will sail and be scored together, they can be a one design class, or different boats using a handicap or rating system. Portsmouth, PHRF, or IRC would be a fleet made up of several different classes of boats using a handicap or rating system. Conversely Naples Sabots, or Optimists may be broken up into several different fleets, A’s, B’s, C’s etc. or flights, Blue, Yellow, Purple, etc. or Divisions, Men and Women.
Class – The type of boat all carrying the same class insignia per Rule G1.1(a). Examples are Farr 40, 49er, Snipe, Cal 20, Naples Sabot, Optimist, etc.
Division – Generally used to further divides fleets. For example, Olympic 470 Men and Women often sail in a combined fleet, and are scored combined, with the division indicating Men and Women.
Flights – A flight is a competitor attribute that can change on a per race basis. It is most commonly used for Appendix LE Addendum C qualifying series such as used by the Optimist Class and Naples Sabot Class.
Mark Townsend s_mark_townsend@hotmail.com
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To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
From: dawnumstot@hotmail.com
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 19:59:52 +0000
Subject: [sailwave] Competitor PHRF Ratings Changed Automatically by Sailwave
First off I’m new to sailboat racing/scoring but am self teaching myself from scoring spreadsheets provided by others and Sailwave help files/resources. Sailwave has been far superior to the spreadsheet option and I have solved all but one problem I can’t seem to find an answer to. I would apprecaite any advise from other Sailwave users.
I am given assinged PHRF handicap numbers for each individual boat registered for a race that they are assigned from PHRF. I enter these into the Competitor screen in the PHRF field. Then after all boats are registed the Race Chair tells me which class each boat is to be put in. I manually edit each competitor on the Competitor screen choosing their Class. The problem is as soon as I change any competitor’s Class, it either erases the PHRF rating I entered or assigns it a different PHRF number, seemingly from some other boat in its new class. ??? Makes for a bit of a mess in the scoring if I don’t change the PHRF rating back every time I change class entries. I end up having to keep a list of every boat and their PHRF and constantly check to make sure Sailwave hasn’t changed the value on me through some edit I made to another field.
I’ve looked into rating files which doesn’t seem to be aimed at PHRF. So, I’m lost and our biggest race is coming up Dec 4th with 100 boats soon to register. Any help would be apprecaited. Thanks.