Flying Fifteen 2020 Series

Overview of the Season

Despite the Covid enforced late start, the season has seen hot competition for places down to the last race.

Highlights include:

  • up to 8 boats competing in 26 completed scoring races.
  • three new entrants to the series Freedom, Yellow and Baccarat.
  • six boats scored wins and seven scored seconds.
  • four Classics scored wins: Dolphin, Norma B, Yellow & Baccarat.
  • a total of 155 race entrants took part
  • Covid meant that over 75% of racers were singlehanded (119 of 155). Heavy weather gave crewed boats a clear advantage, much less the case in lighter airs.
  • the club boats need newer sails however the way boats are sailed has a big impact on position. Anthony proved this year that the club boats can compete with a win and a second! Improvements in the club boats are planned.
Although a close run thing right up to the last race, there is a winner by only one point! With 11 race wins, Adrian pips Sandy to the series with 32 points to Sandy’s 33.

Dolphin sailed a very consistent series and is in a clear third place, John also sailed more races than any at 23.

Norma B, Baccarat and Yellow fought hard for fourth pace.

Sail Mhor showed very good boat speed and would have been much further up the table but for six missed races.

Freedom was held back by tired sails in this Chris’s first season.

 

Boat

Racer

Series points

Wins

Seconds

Series Position

Ffly

Adrian

32

11

3

1

Fulmar

Sandy

33

6

9

2

Dolphin

John

42

4

6

3

Baccarat

David

64

3

3

4

Norma B

Paul

66

1

3

5

Yellow

Anthony

69

1

1

6

Sail Mhor

Dave

105

 

1

7

Freedom

Chris

119

 

 

8

Setting Portsmouth Yardstick (“PY”)

Research was carried out on a large sample of the national FF fleet clubs to determine the trend in PY numbers across the three classes, Open, Silver & Classic. Contact was made with the RYA technical department, the FF association, and individual fleet captains. Whilst the Open PY number is reviewed each year by the RYA, and currently sits at 1021, it is for individual clubs to set PYs for the slower classes of Silver & Classic.

Of importance is the relative increment between classes, and this tends to remain constant within clubs. Generally fleets compete within the range: Silver (+11 to +15 v Open); Classic (+25 to +30 v Open), with a few outliers and one club adopting individual PY’s. Individual PYs are not favoured as competition tends to drive improvement to both vessels and sailing ability. It may be appropriate to review this once relative performance begins to show a clearer pattern and once club boats in particular are brought up to date. In selecting PY numbers for this season, the Silver increment has been set at the lower but average end of the range, and for Classic at the upper end; this to slightly advantage the Classics. The PY numbers chosen for 2020 are thus:

               Open                    1021

Silver                    1032

Classic                  1051

 

Scoring Methodology

We have tried to follow standard RYA scoring.

  • Race times are adjusted by the PY to rank racers by corrected time
  • Points are awarded for ranking (1 for 1st, 2 for 2nd etc). i.e. lowest total scores win the series
  • Every boat is awarded points for each race whether or not it races
  • Not starting a race earns the total number of racers in the series plus one. We had 8 racers so 9 points are awarded for each ‘no show’
  • Starting a race but not completing is awarded the number of finishers of that race plus one point
  • The total number of races in 2020 was 26 but as is normal, racers are allowed to discard a number of races
  • This season we have elected to allow a relatively high number of races to be discarded 30% of the 26 races rounded up to the next whole race i.e. 8.
  • The scoring automatically discards the races with the highest points first.