Some classes are asking to rank boats as “invited” or “experimental”.
Experimental means a similar boat, used to test an improvement, like carbon mast, new rudder, modified spinnaker… before accepting it in the class rules. It is also used when an unknown boat type without a valid certificate enters a race on handicap, with a provisional rating.
Invited is used as a regatta is purely national and a foreign competitor asks to follow the regatta, or a when a local competitor asks, for training purpose, to follow a regatta of a class, with a boat of a different but equivalent class (a Fireball in a regatta of the 470 class)
In such a ranking, frequently used in France, the “normal” boats receive the points regardless of the presence of the invited or experimental boats. So, in a fleet of 20 including 2 experimentals, a DNF scores 19 points.
Further, experimentals or invited receive for each race the points for the place behind the boat just in front of them.
So, when in a fleet of 20 the experimental finish 5th and 10th…
1 to 4 receive 1 to 4 points
5 (experimental) is ranked 5 bis and receives 5 points
6 receives 5 points as if 5 did not exist and similarly 7 to 9 receive 6 to 8 points
10 (experimental) receives 9 points (the points of the previus boat +1)
11 receives 9 points too as id 5 and 10 did not exist
12 to 20 are scored 10 to 18
Race ties don’t need to be solved, except between experimental boats
in the final ranking, no rank is assigned to experimental boats, they appear on the row according to the points, there are no regatta ties with regular boats (experimental ranked behind regular boats with the same points), the rank is just replaced by ‘bis’, ‘exp’ or ‘inv’
I did not faind a similar procedure in SailWave.
Philippe De Troy