Hare and Hounds Personal Handicaps
Personal Handicaps
For the first time, we will be operating personal handicaps in parallel with PYs for the Hare and Hounds series. The interclub, individual Sat and Sun series will continue to have results under standard Portsmouth Yardsticks, but we will also be calculating results under personal handicaps for the individual Sat and Sun series. These work a bit like golf handicaps. 1.0 is par, meaning you are racing exactly off your PY. The lower your personal handicap the faster you are. This is based solely on historical results with no subjective intervention whatsoever.
The modified handicap takes the standard boat PY and multiplies it by this PH factor. The personal handicap factor goes with the helm whatever boat you are sailing. For example if you have a PH of 0.95 and are sailing a Dzero, the modified handicap would be 1032 * 0.95 = 980
The idea is to reward those who have done better than they have done all season and hopefully spread the prizes throughout the fleet.
How the PH is calculated:
For each race, Sailwave works out retrospectively the handicap you would need to have had for the race to finish as a draw, i.e. for everyone in that race to finish on exactly the same corrected time. This is then expressed as a percentage of the PY of the boat you happened to be sailing at the time. This PH calculation is repeated for each race of the Spring, Summer, Autumn and Evening series and averaged. Each race carries the same weighting. If you didn't take part in any of these series, you will race off par 1.0. Visitors from Thorney will also race off 1.0 unless TISC can supply a sailwave series file for the results fairies to calculate a personal handicap. The PH goes with the helm so is transferable even if you sail a different boat in the H&H.
Big thanks to Carl who has spent many hours on spreadsheets crunching the numbers and putting the personal handicaps into Sailwave. We have about 100 sailors from ESC and ESSC with their personal handicap calculated. Given that some people have only raced once all year, expect some anomolies. If you happened to sail a blinder that race, you will get hammered with a low personal handicap. Equally, if you stuck it out in a dying wind when everyone else gave up it will help to give you a higher personal handicap!
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Last updated 22:45 on 19 February 2025