PHRF Ratings

Rumor has it that our Yacht club may be changing their ways and switching from "Rocky Mountain" PHRF to Northwest PHRF. My current rating is 144.

Can any of you racing Guru's out there tell me where to find the NW ratings or even tell me what mine would be. Deep fin keel, no spinaker, 2 blade feathering prop, 150 furling Genoa, no racing sails, lack of talent but good at heart.

Thanks,

Kim

http://www.phrf-nw.org/


Here is the website for them.

Thank you!!!!

Yikes, looks like one must step up to the old pay window to see what the rating is. Kind of don't want to do this until our club decides on going to the NW PHRF. Any other idea's on how to get the rating would be appreciated. I am just curious at this point.

I saw at least one E35-3 listed, but this site doesnt give the base ratings or handicap adjustments, depending upon the keel, sails, prop etc.

You might want to call or email a handicapper directly,and I'm sure that you can get the info.

You can also try this site for a great reference www.phrfne.org which is the New England site. It provides a base handicap and also adjustments, although the handicapping in the NW might be somewhat different.

Good luck

Neal
Enterprise

Won't change much

The good news is I doubt very much you will see a change of more than about 6 sec/mile-if at all. And trust me-unless you are on a long distance race of 30 miles or so-with long legs on one point of sail, even 12 seconds rarely is the real difference. Think about this:

On a typical 5-10 mile course, with 1 mile upwind legs, a SINGLE windshift taken advantage of can mean well over a minute. Now think about 2-3 shifts that you play correctly compared to the other guys.

Or the start-the boat who wins the start is often a minute or more ahead of the guys who start at the wrong end of the line-the SECOND the gun goes off!

6 seconds/per mile on a 6 mile course is 36 seconds. You can gain that over another even rated boat just by executing 3-4 tacks or gybes better than the other guy!!!

Work on the sailing, and for the most part, the ratings take care of themselves-it just does not matter-unless you are not interested in improving your game-and I know all of us here are!

The real fact is, regardless of ratings, in most cases the guy who sails well will win-and usually will still have won even if he had a rating that was 12-15 seconds mile worse!


"Must go faster...."

S

"Ratings and Reality on the Water"

Seth's great commentary on the differences made by small differences in rating vs real-world reactions to wind, water, and traffic provides a nice segue into the "un-rating system" our club started in this geographic area in 1978: Level Fleet racing. The club was started that year by several one design fleets (Ranger-20, Catalina-22, and Tanzer-22) and almost immediately ran into the problem that members were moving up into a diverse collection of larger boats without the numbers to form OD fleets.

They decided to simply group them by similar ratings, since general ratings info is readily available and/or can be figured out on a local basis. For buoy racing, where there are miltiple opportunities for everyone to gain and lose bunches of seconds at every mark, it proved out to work very well. As long as the boats in any start are within, say, 18 seconds of rating of each other, they race for line honors.

That club is still conducting racing with this system, all these years later.

At the top levels of competition, where microscopic differences in speed/skill show up, I admit that you DO need to either stick with One Design, or use the most accurate handicap system you can find. (And good luck on the later.)

Another .01 worth of opinion,
Loren in PDX

Exactly!!!

Loren,

This is what more clubs should do. It is typically level 72, or 60, or whatever the central number is used to devlop this level rating class-take, as you say, boats that rate within 9 or so seconds of a given number, and for buoy racing especially, call it "even" and let the kids have at it!!

It is as close to OD racing as you can get without a OD class, and you know where you stand on the race course without looking at a clock.

This works better for somre than for others. In LIS and Socal, and I think the PNW, they have an active Level 72 fleet. This is J 35's, Schock 35's, IOR 40's, and similar types. This group actually can do some distance racing on this basis, since the diffs are indeed small, but when you have say, and Olson 30, a Sov 33, and maybe a a Trpp 33 (all in the 90 range), the plan will work on a 5-7 mile buoy race, but not too well on a distance race. On a long, heavy downwind, you can say Buh-By to the Olson, in light-moderate air the Sov will net out, and on a heavy beat the Tripp will be tops in the group. But it would take some distance for this to make the sailing uneven.

The "Level" concept is great for local club day races, and eveytime I have seen it employed, both participation and the fun factor are increased!

Thanks

Thanks to all for your input. I am still smarting from the change our club made for the 2006 racing year. Boats with a 180 PHRF or higher race in the slower division regardless of spinaker or not. And boats with 179 PHRF and lower must race in division 1, spinaker or not. Mine is 144.

I was looking forward to racing our new boat in the old "working sail Division" since I am without a spinaker, but with the change, I had to race with the Hobie monohauls, Melges's, J 80's, J 90, S2's and all the other spinaker equipted crawch rockets.

This is lake racing, yes a very big lake but it takes a lot of wind for me to put the whoopass on these guys on a beat (hull speed). Very seldom do we see sustained wind over 10knots. But look out on a run or reach. When they pop their chutes, I may as well be draging a sea anchor.

There is talk about changing things again. Hope to be able to compete again.

non-spin...

On the Chesapeake, we have a non-spinnaker division in most of our races/regattas. In our local club "beer can" races on wed nights, we have a non-spin allowance that is added to your phrf rating. It's based on a formula (PxE)/(IxJ) from your rig dimensions. There's no way you should be racing phrf against a J-80 without a spinnaker and expect to compete... Especially in light air.
Chris

Thanks Chris, yeh I know, the J80 rating is 120. Mine is 144. The race commodore says with the time the J-80 has to give me then I should correct out and be competitive. Well, after the first 2 races this year, I corrected out completely. Quit racing. By the way, I am not a newbe to racing. Then again I am not a racing guru either. But would like to COMPETE with the Ericson. BTW, if I was flying a spinaker, my rating would be about 20 points less (120).

Thanks again.

New (2007) PHRF rating INFO

There is now a public PDF document on the US Sailing web site that (finally!) shows national averages of ratings for all production boats that are racing. Most Ericsons and Olsons are there. Be prepared to scroll down a bit, as the pages display the boats in alpha order (Olsons are on pg 78).
There is a second database with rig information there, also. Since it is downloadable, I will attach it here also.

http://www.ussailing.org/phrf/

This may help anyone with a basic question about how a given model will probably be rated.

Cheers,
Loren

Kim,
We have the same boats (as you know). I have a 135% and rate 149. I am told that the rating will go to 131 with a spinnaker (180%). The Northumberland Straight Yachting Association massages ratings out of the New England PHRF group and the Great Lakes group.

There are about 35 boats racing regularly in Charlottetown - from a Taylor 40 all the way to Tanzer 22's. I'm happy we all race as one big group.

Steve Murray
E 35 III 222
Charlottetown, PEI

Other end of the scale

We have a small racing club on a medium sized lake in central Virginia, and are in the middle of deciding how to handle racing classes. Because we have a limited number of boats, we have to be careful not to have so many classes that there aren't enough racers to fill them. But a problem we run into with having just a few classes (3 right now) is that pure racing boats are put in with cruisers, and thus are virtually guaranteed top finishes in whatever races they enter. We have a spinnaker class, with a nice variety of Olson, J boats, Rocket 22, Ultimate 20, Merit 25 etc. We also have non-spinnaker A and B classes that in the past were divided, essentially by gentleman's agreement, so that the faster boats would compete in A, the slower ones in B, and any boat that began to dominate in B would move up. This year we have changed that to pure phrf separation at 220 - below that a boat goes in A, above that it races in B. In both setups we usually have all-out racing boats (on days when they can't get enough crew to fly a spinnaker, for example) going against cruisers, and the results are quite predictable - the racers just walk off and leave the cruisers. People who have raced with the club for years and won fleet championships are starting to drop out - why go to the trouble with a really good, well-equipped cruiser when you the best you can hope for is a non-win? I have proposed a "Racing Fleet" class that would be for non-spinnaker, non-cruising type boats, but though the cruising skippers generally support the idea, there is much resistance at the leadership level. The argument is that since we hardly have enough boats now, creating a new fleet will dilute the classes even more. My response is that we are losing numbers precisely because of our unwillingness to address the problem of the hot sleds cherrypicking in the non-spin classes. Any ideas?

Bob, Same problem HERE! There is essentially no "cruising" class anymore! Some guys go out and "match race" similar boats,"one on one" w/ the race committee providing the buoys. No seasonal class gratification.

The "hotshots" are left to bicker amongst themselves!

I'm a "one design" sailor @ heart(30 years) and could never race under a rating system, that's just MHO. I have never competed w/ my boat, except for
"across the the lake" drag races w/ other E23's!

Around here, we need at least 3 boats on the line to have a "class." 5 are usually needed to qualigy for trophies. What I have done in the past is call up at least four other owners and talk them into racing a series. The RC then treats us like a OD class, and others that see the fun and want to join in would be advised to check in with the group first. It takes a little phone time to set up, but you make new friends, too.

Other times it is a looser arrangement and the YC can build around this nucleus group of boats.

I was doing this in order to race level, i.e. without a handicap. Because of that we had to be selective about how far to stretch the range of speed potential boats wanting in (or some the RC wanted to throw in).

You could do this with handicap boats, too -- just be sure that you set parameters of sail selection (like spinnaker or white-sails-only) and hull types (planing hulls or displ. hull forms).

Having raced a lot in a jib-and-main class in OD racing, I rather prefer the chess game of racing when no one easily escapes the ravening pack...


Cheers,
Loren

E23 One Design

Loren Beach said:

Around here, we need at least 3 boats on the line to have a "class." 5 are usually needed to qualify for trophies.

Click to expand...

On our lake we had the same requirement! In 1979 we came up 1 boat shy of having "OD status" for the E23! There were 3 already purchased & I was ready to buy!
I "held my cards" on buying a new one until it sorted itself out! The down payment was "in the bank", meanwhile I crewed for the PO of my present boat!

Class status went to the J24, 8 boats dwindled to less than 5 in 6 short years

Having raced a lot in a jib-and-main class in OD racing, I rather prefer the chess game of racing when no one easily escape the ravening pack...
Cheers,
Loren

Click to expand...

I raced on E-scows for years, 13 boats on "our" starting line, 60 @ regattas. Leeward marks were always exciting, especially the first one, before the "ravening" fleet thinned out! After many years it came down to a "chess match" w/ 1or 2 opponents....:unsure:

.....ravening....., great word!

Low class

In the past, our B Fleet has had some fantastic racing. Boat handicaps have ranged from about 180 to 270. Some boats are hurting on light air days, but go strong when the wind is up, and vice versa. Overall, fleet results have been unpredictable and therefore exciting. Two years ago we had 5 different winners in 7 fall series races, and a buddy of mine was 13 sec back when we won one of them, so that could easily have been 6 different (we won two). It was great - the series champ wasn't decided til the last race. Now it's just a procession behind whichever sport boats show up, fighting it out among ourselves for 3rd or 4th, at best. If I had something pretty hot, I sure wouldn't get much of a thrill from beating a dacron-sailed, inboard equipped cruiser - I'd be beating the bushes to get some other boats of my ilk to raven after. Yes, that is a nice word. In the past we have had some wonderful battles between boats of various description and handicap, and generally finishes were close - I've lost by 3 and 6 seconds, for example. Now, in both A and B classes, the winner's time is generally from 8 to 10 percent better than the next boat. Good boats and skippers are starting to drop out, newbies don't get too excited when they see what they are up against, and the powers that be deny there's a problem or talk about combinng fleets since numbers are decreasing. Go figger...