Remember the Handicap Hotlaps project ? I talked about it here four weeks ago. Interested sailors were invited to sail a simple, standard course (NYC B1A) under constant conditions and then log all their solo laptimes on the Trudeau Handicaps Hotlaps thread. The goal is to use the accumulated results from many skippers sailing multiple boats to make an objective, practical handicapping system that weights raceboats based on their in-water performance. Such a PHRF-SL system might allow different boats to race against each other fairly.
With handicapping, a good, caffeinated skipper at the helm of a ’slow boat’ could legitimately triumph over a competitor in a faster-scripted vessel who’s drinking chardonnay and talking on a cellphone. That’s fair, right? People have legitimately complained about this for as long as I have been sailing SL, and the issue remains a problem in competitions such as the NYC Big-Boat Races, the upcoming SYC Passages Races, and the Sunday SYC Regatta mixed-fleet races.
Over the past month more than a dozen sailors have logged nearly 120 lap times for the project! Woots to: M1sha Dallin, Bea Woodget, RnSdriver Lane, Oliphant Ming, Taku Raymaker, joepie Korobase, Jane Fossett, Manul Rotaru, Hpathe Boucher, Liv Leigh, Rabog Rabeni, Gemma Vuckovic, Vin Mariani, and Harmony Bloch!
Here is the summary for fifteen different boats so far (the full table is here). For each boat, the table on the right lists the average net lap time (Finish time minus Start time) and the standard deviation. The final column calculates a relative performance ‘weight’ to make boat comparisons easy, using the Trucordia Yawl as the reference boat (with a ‘weight’ of “1.00″).
A quick look at the table shows that the Defender II, Friendship Sloop, and JaqCat are all an equal match for the Yawl on the B1A test course. The Sea Sharp, Ketch, Trudeau 32, and BlueWater Schooner are all slower, consistent with Jacqueline Trudeau’s scripting for those boats. Confirming most sailors’ reports, the Larinda Schooner is more than 10% faster than the Yawl, and it’s lap time is roughly equivalent to the Tetra 35 v1.2’s performance. Perhaps no surprise, an ACA32 is even faster than that, rounding the course nearly 30% ahead of a Yawl.
Although the ACC boat does not use the windsetter, Manul Rotaru deserves applause for adjusting his ACC’s boatwind to NYC Hotlaps settings and completing several runs on B1A. His lap times show that the ACC is remarkably faster than either the ACA32 or Larinda, and it’s more than 80% faster than a Yawl. The fastest boat so far in the Handicap Hotlaps is the TruCor Beach Cat. It came in with scores nearly twice as fast as a Yawl.
The results are intriguing so far, but the Handicaps project will get much more interesting as more boats are added to the list, and as more skippers contribute lap data. It’s notable that two of the most popular sailboats, the Tako and Fizz were not included in the original handicap trials. That happened because the handicap was originally designed to rate boats for PHRF-style mixed fleet racing, and the Tako and Fizz seemed to hang out with a different, more One-Design crowd. That obviously was a mistake, and it would be very valuable to have lap information on those boats as part of the growing database.
If you want to add your scores to the Handicap Hotlaps, go here for all the info; I will keep updating the spreadsheets, and talking about the results here as we go along.
!!ADDENDUM!!
Less than an hour after I posted this article, I discovered Svar Beckersted’s new water sims were under installation. The eight new sims [and more to come!] will greatly expand the navigable waters in the USS. Unfortunately, the changes in geography mean that the NYC B1A race course no longer works. This offers a wonderful opportunity to set up a new Handicaps Hotlap course designed to compare performance across the spectrum of sailing vessels.
Watch for more news in a day or two, as soon as the tectonic plates come to rest in their new positions in the Southwestern USS!
11 responses so far ↓
1 Manul Rotaru // Feb 3, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Jane, thanks for this great written summary, and thanks a lot for all your work on the Handicap Hotlaps Database! /me passes a bunch of flowers
I really like all the intentions, side effects and potentials around this project very much, and I´m looking forward which new course will replace B1a and I hope that the mixed fleet/PHRF thing comes up more and more. I have joined several spontaniously funracing activity, Trudeaus of various sizes and other boats meet at a startline spontaniously and have fun and a great time together. In that sense it´s already there, and afterwards here and there ppl ask about speeds of the various boats to compare. The Handicap Hotlaps Database helps to bring things away from myth, hearsay and whatever by trying to come up with some empirically facts. Sailors in SL can benefit from that in various interesting and constructively ways.
2 Harmony Bloch // Feb 4, 2008 at 12:11 am
err…What Manul said…
Seriously, I thought this was a great project Jane and had a lot of fun running the course. Thank you for organising it and using it to develop such interesting information.
Another boat I’d like to see added to the list is a Z40, I always wondered how it compared to a beachcat.
Looking forward to the next course and the next set of hotlaps
3 Harmony Bloch // Feb 4, 2008 at 12:15 am
PS
This has got to be one of the most cross-reference-intense posts I’ve seen in a long time…and all useful too…well done!
4 Jane Fossett // Feb 4, 2008 at 5:50 am
Harmony Bloch said: “… Another boat I’d like to see added to the list is a Z40, I always wondered how it compared to a beachcat. …”
I agree. I’d like to include a variety of boats so we can make comparisons and organize some mixed-fleet races.
I’ve actually been trying to add the Zinnemann-40 to the database for several weeks,
but it looks like the Big Cat miscalculates racewind.
NYC racewind is dir 5 (from the East). The picture above shows a Z-40 using “wrong” racewind blowing from the South.
For comparison, I’ve included a picture of a Tetra35 crossing the line using the correct wind (from the East).
I’ve mentioned this problem to Hans. When it’s fixed, we can sail the Z-40.
5 Jane Fossett // Feb 4, 2008 at 10:36 am
Here’s a new map for Handicap Hotlaps, different from the one I posted yesterday (this one is shorter).
USS F4 has upwind, downwind and reach legs, and there are several marker turns.
You’ll find a larger copy by clicking “Race Courses” under “Pages” in the left-sidebar menu.
6 Jacquline Trudeau // Feb 5, 2008 at 11:48 am
JacqCat - a catboat, a humble cod fishing boat - performs on par with Defender, a born & bred America’s Cup racer from the Golden Age of yachting? That is just *wrong*.
I suppose it’s too late to make the requisite adjustment.
7 jane fossett // Feb 5, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Jacqueline Trudeau said: “JacqCat - a catboat, a humble cod fishing boat - performs on par with Defender, a born & bred America’s Cup racer from the Golden Age of yachting? That is just *wrong*…”
Haha, yes, pretty surprising!
Three intrepid sailors logged ten ‘good runs’ in JaqCats; we then compared their net lap times to fifteen runs by four skippers sailing Trucordia Yawls.
Pretty amazingly, there was only a TWO SECOND difference between the average lap times of the two boats.
Looking over all this data, the fascinating thing turns out to be the consistency across sailors and the narrow distribution of finish times for each boat. We still need to collect more lap times, but it’s really looking like the Handicap Hotlaps results are statistically valid.
That’s a real tribute to the skill of all the skippers posting scores!
8 Harmony Bloch // Feb 6, 2008 at 12:13 am
Dare I say “Jacqueline! what were you thinking?”
I can only assume someone slipped in a teflon lining to the Jaqcats hull in the master drawings
9 jane fossett // Feb 6, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Harmony Bloch said: “… Another boat I’d like to see added to the list is a Z40, I always wondered how it compared to a beachcat. …”
The best thing about SLSailing, I think, isn’t the boats.
It’s the wonderful, intelligent world-wide community of sailors who meet on SL waters to share fun, trade stories, and sometimes compete in boat races.
Hans Zinnemann is one of my favorite people, and I’m delighted to report Hans has agreed to correct the Z-40 racewind issue I mentioned in a comment above.
Harmony? Watch out for beta Z-40’s testing the USS waters, and look for a major Zinnemann upgrade in a few weeks!
10 Elisha Paklena // Feb 6, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Well it’s really no surprise… I mean, EVERYONE knows that cats are incredible
11 jane fossett // Feb 6, 2008 at 7:33 pm
The next round of Handicap Hotlaps is taking off full sail.
In the last 24 hours, six skippers have posted 26 USS F4 lap times in seven different boats.
We now have Z-40 and Tako data, and Taku Raymaker this morning said he’d also post lap data for the new DG-20!
Woot!
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