Portsmouth Handicapping

Portsmouth Handicapping

PPYC changed it's handicapping system from PHRF to Portsmouth beginning with the Fall 2003 regattas. While PHRF served us well for many years, we believe Portsmouth is a better handicapping system for PPYC for the following reasons:

• Only a few boats are currently racing in the handicap fleets at PPYC. Most boats racing on a regular basis at PPYC are members of one-design fleets that require no handicapping system.

• Our PHRF rating system was a good system, but it was designed for a much larger handicap fleet than we currently have. We could no longer justify the time and expense required to administer it.

• Portsmouth handicapping is nearly free to PPYC so we no longer have to charge a PHRF fee.

• Portsmouth ratings, adjustments and rules are administered on a national level and require very little work at the local level (other than reporting our results to US SAILING). Our entire ratings list is maintained on a spreadsheet instead of a complicated database like we previously used for PHRF.

• Portsmouth ratings are wind speed adjusted and use time-on-time which should result in more accurate handicapping in our light air inland lake conditions.

• The complete Portsmouth system and ratings list are available on the US SAILING Web site at http://www.ussailing.org/portsmouth/ . To check to see if your boat is already rated, go to http://www.ussailing.org/portsmouth/pyindex.asp and look for your boat under the "Offshore Classes" (note that some boats may be listed under "Keelboat Classes").

• Boats that do not currently have a nationally recognized Portsmouth rating, can still be rated locally by converting from a PHRF rating. New boats without a PHRF rating can also be assigned a local Portsmouth rating.

• The application for unrated boats is much simpler than the previous PHRF application making it much easier for new boats to receive a rating.

• Our review of Portsmouth vs. PHRF shows that Portsmouth may rate "cruising" type boats more accurately than does PHRF. PHRF ratings assume all boats are optimized for racing. Portsmouth makes similar assumptions, but Portsmouth ratings are based on actual race results throughout the nation and the calculated ratings seem to reflect the actual cruising configuration of many boats. PHRF ratings tend to be based on a boats theoretical potential performance ("guesstimates") and once assigned don't change very often (note that some PHRF fleets do adjust ratings on a regular basis, but we think most don't).

• Most of our "cruising" type boats are rated slower under Portsmouth than under PHRF. This is an advantage for the cruising boats when competing against racing boats.

• The rating differences using Portsmouth for our "racing" type boats are consistent with the differences under PHRF. Racing type boats will see very little difference in their results under Portsmouth.

• For our races that use pursuit starts and that require a time-on-distance calculation (such as Wednesday night races), we have devised a formula that allows Portsmouth ratings to be used just like we had used PHRF ratings.

For questions about handicaps, contact the PPYC Race Director.