RYA Portsmouth Yardstick Seminar

The object of this seminar was to tell the clubs and classes about how PY numbers are arrived at. The scheme in general is described on the RYA site here. Its worth a read if you're interested. But for those who aren't interested here's a quick summary. Basically the thing goes round in a cycle:-

Each year the RYA get returns from the clubs with suggested numbers worked out from their handicap race results. They do a deal of manipulation of the data to produce averages, and dish these out as next year's numbers. The clubs use these, amended if they wish, to run the next season's racing, and from the results...

The RYA send out about 800 return forms each year. The form asks the club to fill in (amongst other things)
No of boats racing in each class
No of races they've finished
Clubs suggested PY number for the class from their experience.

From those 800 forms they get around 200 back! They take these forms and enter them in a new computer system (which they're very pleased with!) which does a whole load of sorting out, but basically spits out at the end an average of all the recommendations. This is an average of the number of races, and not the number of classes, so the opinion of a club that runs 50 races with Cherubs in counts more than that of a club that only has two races with Cherubs.
They then take an average of the last 3 years results, and this is the suggested number. This goes to a committee which so some final sanity checks before the number gets published.
I could go into a lot more depth in this if anyone is interested, but this is the guts of it. They've got a whole bunch of cross checks and techniques to ensure that there aren't too many anomalies and the numbers are as representative as possible of what seems to be going on out on the race track. Also new for this year is a note of which the development classes are so that clubs can take account of older boats. There's information elsewhere on this site on suggested PY numbers for older Cherubs.

I took a look at the actual returns for the Cherubs, which make quite interesting reading. Bearing in mind this represents about a quarter of UK clubs, so the actual number of active Cherubs is presumably around four times this...(and I can assure you there are a lot of classes with far fewer returns!).

Year	Clubs	Boats	Races	Average PY
97	4	12	58	1054
98	3	10	72	1051
99	4	8	32	1024
2000	9	14	72	1032

A good number of the clubs making returns were quite unknown to me, so there are an awful lot of active Cherubs out there the Association knows nothing about! Also we now know why there were so few Cherubs out on the circuit last year - you were all club racing!

The range of values for the Cherub was actually fairly narrow - varying from around 1020 to 1050. (the lowest was from from Gurnard I think, understandably with Andy and Alex burning up the fleet there. Martin Harrison commented about how he can't get them near them in the Moth anymore, and I understand that Andy is getting a club handicap of about 930 next year, which probably reflects the fact that his boat is awesome in lighter conditions compared to many Cherubs, and that at Gurnard the tide tends to prohibit sailing in the really light stuff (is that right Andy?). And if you think that 1020 to 1050 isn't very narrow, consider that clubs placed the Firefly at anything between 1120 and 1200!

On the whole I think the current PY system is probably as good as can practically be achieved for a single number system without spending a fortune. And its not a charged service by the RYA, they absorb all the expenses in the general running of the Authority.

Oh yes, and in case you are wondering, next year's number is 1037. I think that's probably fair to generous for 97 rules boats with big rigs and snouts and wide beam, and especially for the narrow boats like the Slug and the Paterson 7. If those of us with older boats get out in plenty of races it will stay helpful!

Jim Champ, March 2000.