The Mad Sailor

While I’m trashing PHRF I would like to spread a little poison pen on race committees also. Last year there was an uproar over the Oxford race. Only a very few of the fastest boats were able to finish before the time limit expired. Most fleets had no finishing boats and the race committee did nothing to shorten the course. Therefore I’d like a new rule added:

When no boat from a class finishes a course and the race committee does nothing to shorten the course, the race committee must pick up the entire bar bill for that class

This is a tale of corruption, abuse of office and theft. You see PHRF on the Chesapeake has mysteriously changed the class splits. How did this happen? Why?

First I want you to read this article. Go ahead, read it! I’ll wait ….

Doesn’t that sound like a compassionate, thoughtful person. It’s not! It is the most mindless dribble I’ve ever heard! Let me explain the real workings of PHRF here on the Chesapeake. There are actually four perceived divisions of PHRF. There is ‘N’, non-spin. This is a mixed fleet of some of the oldest and best sailors around who are now taking a more relaxed attitude towards racing. It’s also a great training ground for new sailors.

Then we have the spinnaker classes, C/D, B and A. The ‘A’ fleet is the money fleet, bigger and faster boats, bigger egos, in many cases bigger budgets. The other fleets are filled with the boats Bingman was talking about. Working class sailors that can’t afford or simple don’t want the expense of new sails every year. We don’t get paid for this you know.

PHRF ‘B’ has been an especially active fleet. This is mostly the cruiser/racer class boats and the performance boats of a long long time ago. Bruce called my boat a performance boat. Well, maybe, twenty years ago, but it’s been a long time since a Santana 30/30 mounted a successful campaign around here. The best of this fleet tend to time their budget and crew training to come together for a year or two and dominate the fleet. Then it’s someone else’s turn. There are exceptions of course. There are some sailors that could beat you in bathtub with a bed sheet, but I think that’s true in every fleet.

Now up until this year PHRF ‘B’ included boats with ratings of 119-154. Years ago there was some small change to get all of the J-29’s into one fleet. Then is was undone. But otherwise it has remained stable for as long as I can remember. This year PHRF decides to change ‘B’ to 128-157 and create a new ‘A3′ fleet with ratings of 95-127. Why??? I asked Bruce about it and got a very unsatisfactory “smoke and mirrors” answer about balancing the number of boats in each fleet. I’ve heard from others that A2 was shrinking so it could be a good excuse to change things, but stealing the best boats from the healthiest fleet on the bay is not the answer. I can’t prove this, but I suspect that the J105 fleet, also healthy, is responsible for the squeeze on A2. These boats are about the same speed and cost, and there are enough to race one design. Good on them!

So why steal boats from ‘B’. The result is very VERY interesting. The old ‘A2′ fleet took ratings of 86-118. The new ‘A3′ class boats are rated 95-127. Now on the Chesapeake we often race in dying wind conditions and it’s fairly common knowledge that the faster boats in a fleet have a slight advantage in dying winds. Just as the slower boats have a slight advantage in a building wind. PHRF A3 fleet gains a bunch of slower boats to beat up on. But wait, Bruce doesn’t race PHRF, he races MORC - that’s what he told me. So guess what?! The 120-126 rated boats that he stole from ‘B’ are mostly MORC class boats. MORC is so small on the Chesapeake that they don’t have starts in many of the races we like to do. Is Bruce trying to beef up MORC at PHRF’s expense?

Just a minute. Bruce races MORC, what is he doing on the PHRF committee? You’ll love this. He is both chief handicapper for PHRF and captain of the MORC fleet. Stop right there!! Even if he is innocent, he can’t be both! That is such a perceived CONFLICT OF INTEREST!! Bruce! Step down! Oh yes one more jewel, Bruce was careful to tell me that this new change was voted in by the PHRF delegates, not the handicappers. Bruce, really, it’s very hard to tell the difference. In some cases they even have the same names.

I held off racing this year. Took some money away from the clubs that work so hard to host these events to see where my fleet went and how they were doing. Seems they are lost. I haven’t seen the guys I like to belly up to on the race course on the results sheets. ‘B’ fleet seems to be down too, not as many boats as before.

Is it just me? I don’t think so. Bruce was careful to tell me that the delegates - handicappers, whoever, asked the people that would be affected and there were few objections. I don’t know who was asked. No one asked me and there are plenty of objections now. So PHRF - put it back! Let my fleet go! And Bruce - resign. You can’t be both.

I apologize to the active and wonderful multihull fleet. I left you out of this discussion. I know you guys are out there too, but this is a monohull problem.

PHRF villafied in story and song. Just what does this little number mean anyway?

PHRF provides a handicap adjusted to 3 second increments. What does 3 seconds a mile mean. Well, around here beer can racing is usually a 1 mile windward/leeward course with 2 upwind legs and 2 downwind legs. Only 4 miles on the rumbline, but you don’t usually sail rumbline so it’s actually more like 6 miles. Your handicap is computed on the rumbline distance though. I think that’s a mistake, but it is what it is, right? So if you owe the next boat 3 seconds per mile on our typical course you owe a total of 12 seconds. You have to beat them by 12 seconds! How many boatlengths is that? At an average boat speed of 5 knots it would be 101 feet. For a 30 foot boat that’s only 3 boat lengths. Strange how that works out. For the usual beer can race the handicap is about 1 boat length per second. at 5 knots. Not going that fast? Then the distance is shorter. Only half way done? Then the distance is also 1/2.

Well, that all sounds simple enough. So what’s all the complaining about? It’s a fundamental problem, comparing apples and oranges. Boats perform differently in light air, heavy air, flat water, choppy water and big waves. You can’t reduce a boats performance potential to a single number. It’s not just a PHRF problem either. All handicap systems have the same problem. At least with PHRF your handicap can be adjusted locally to better fit average conditions. The question is, which is sweeter, apples or oranges I know of one boat around here that terrorizes her fleet in light air, but struggles in wind over 10-12 knots. I’ve seen boats that mostly live up to their rating and boats that can’t get close to their rating. Now we all know that it’s easier (and cheaper) to blame the rating than fix the problem. So if you’re having problems because of your rating it would probably serve you better to save up for new sails. Unless of course some lame-brain, know-it-all, smart-ass chief PHRF handicapper who also happens to be captain of the MORC fleet decides to destroy the best fleet on the bay by changing the fleet splits to favor his boat. But that will be the subject of my next rant