Hi all

Just a question for users of Top Yacht if someone can give me an answer

If a four race series is run using Top Yacht should the 3rd race starting handicaps AHC be the same as the second race CHC

Regards Don

Yep, previous race's CHC always becomes the next race's AHC.

Hi Planeray

Thanks for that

Would there be any circumstances where this would not be the case

I will give you a couple of examples where i see some abnormalities between the CHC of the previous race and the AHC of the next one and I would be interested to see if you can see any reason for it

This is a stand alone 4 race series held over a period of 4 months where two clubs combine their fleets to race for a series trophy and the starting handicaps were agreed too by both clubs at the start of the series

Boat 1
Belongs to the club using Top Yacht and races in other club races occurring between these races
Race 1 AHC 1.062 BHC 1.062 CHC 1.062 Boat placed 6th in a fleet of 13
Race 2 AHC 1.062 BHC 1.076 CHC 1.067 Boat placed 3rd in a fleet of 12
Race 3 AHC 1.062 BHC 1.076 CHC 1.067 Boat placed 1st in a fleet of 9

Boat 2
Belongs to a different club to the one using Top Yacht and only sails in these combined races
Race 1 AHC 1.150 BHC 1.150 CHC 1.150 Boat placed 5th in a fleet of 13
Race 2 AHC 1.150 BHC 1.150 CHC 1.150 Boat placed 5th in a fleet of 12
Race 3 AHC 1.151 BHC 1.132 CHC 1.145 Boat placed 6th in a fleet of 9

Boat 3
Belongs to the club using Top Yacht and races in other club races occurring between these races
Race 1 AHC 1.210 BHC 1.186 CHC 1.202 Boat placed 7th in a fleet of 13
Race 2 AHC 1.202 BHC 1.195 CHC 1.200 Boat placed 6th in a fleet of 12
Race 3 AHC 1.204 BHC 1.204 CHC 1.204 Boat placed 4th in a fleet of 9 (It appears this was the boat that was used to today for the BHC calculations to determine the AHC for the fleet for the next race)

I have bolded the things I don't understand and i would appreciate your thoughts or the thoughts of anyone else who has a understanding of the program

I do not have access to the Top Yacht program that is being used to generate these numbers so I do not know what settings have been applied to the program

Regards Don

It is possible, if you are running a series that is not a carry over from a previous series, that Top Yacht will do a back calculate across the first x (normally 4) races to assign a beginning handicap then recalculate the races again.

Depending on the settings, perhaps some people ran outside the expected values and have been adjusted accordingly. But you will have to ask the handicapper to investigate. Also, the handicapper may have manually adjusted 1 boat and it causes a cascade affect on other boats to keep it with the 3 minute range for all boats.

TopYacht has caused me a lot of grief over the years and they don't appear to have fixed some of the anomolies that crop up from time to time.

Hi EC31

I appreciate your thoughts

The differences are not a lot but they did alter the place of boat 2 in today's race

Regards Don

Select to expand quote

I do not have access to the Top Yacht program that is being used to generate these numbers so I do not know what settings have been applied to the program

Regards Don

Here you go Don
The only number generator you need for handicapping

Another question

In race 1 the wind died at the end and 6 slower boats were becalmed sailed a lot slower than their handicaps but this is what was calculated

AHC 0.937 BHC 0.740 CHC 0.937
AHC 0.870 BHC 0.679 CHC 0.870
AHC 0.870 BHC 0.674 CHC 0.870
AHC 0.850 BHC 0.628 CHC 0.850
AHC 0.850 BHC 0.621 CHC 0.850
AHC 0.894 BHC 0.625 CHC 0.850

In race 2 of the series not all of the above boats sailed but the ones that did started on the same AHC as their CHC from race 1

I understand that the system has clamps to stop someones handicap changing by heaps if the have a bad race or a problem but I would have expected to see some small drop in their starting handicaps for the next race

With the 7 boats that finished before them 1st 2nd and 3rd had their handicaps raised, 4th 5th and 6th didn't change and 7th had their handicap dropped

Their might be a reason for this and hopefully someone has a better understanding of what is happening

Craig 66

Thanks for the heads up on how it works

Regards Don

I suspect it will be a clamping parameter, also could be a race time limit (but not likely if they got a result). Unusual that 4th did not change handicap, as 5th & 6th should be the reference boats. Certainly 8, 9 & 10 should have got back 1, 2 & 3 minutes respectively (if that is how it is setup). The handicapper should be able to explain it, and if he can't, he can manually change the AHC's to the CHC and recalculate.

You can always protest the committee, so they explain exactly how they scored the results (you usually can't protest the actual handicap calculation). I have in the past 'cause I can be an annoying git at times when results are clearly wrong and no ones want's to fix it.

Sometimes for a small fleet, it is just easier to do it on a spreadsheet.......

Hi EC31

I don't really want to protest anything but I would just like to get an understanding of what the program is doing and to be confident it is doing what it is supposed to do

I think you are probably spot on about the clamp settings because reading the information on the Top Yacht website it appears that the handicapper can change the settings that determine what will happen when a boat has a bad race or a problem and the BHC is outside of a certain percentage so that either the CHC remains unchanged from that races AHC or the CHC is only reduced by a preset amount determined by the clamp setting

I might give Top Yacht a call tomorrow and get their take on how it works

Regards Don