GBCA Discussion Forum

What started as an experiment in January 2010 now has 126 entries being tracked. The Cruising Class typically brings out as many boats as any other class for the Rum Races.

Initially, the first series was to be free with a fee going forward. After that first Icicle series, the GBCA Board voted overwhelmingly to keep it free for all (not a free-for-all). That?s what good Boards should do, choosing long-term sustainability over short term profit.

Since then, we have seen an influx of new boats, faces and volunteers. It?s been exciting to watch people being excited about racing. Did I mention it was exciting?  Once folks get the fever (first one?s free baby), they get into it and want that next rating, and the next and the next. Gotcha!

Now back to the rating thing. Four years is about as much as a Super-Chicken can take. She?ll hardly drop on the rating board anymore and nobody wants ?infinity? for a rating. It?s time for a new Chicken. It?s time for the next generation of rating software. It?s time for ?The Rooster?.

E-mail or otherwise turn in your finish times to the current GBCA Fleet Captain as usual and ?The Rooster? will strut out your new ratings with pride. Hope you?re an early riser.

The GBCA Club Handicap ratings are updated at:

http://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/applet_registrant_list.php?regatta_id=2575&custom_report_id=2

Remember, to be eligible for a Series trophy, you must be a GBCA Senior Member as of the date of the last race, so check your membership if you're in the running.  Better yet, make sure you're a Senior Member, period

The GBCA Club Handicap ratings have been calculated and posted at:

http://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/applet_registrant_list.php?regatta_id=2575&custom_report_id=2

The GBCA Club Handicap ratings have been calculated and posted at:

http://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/applet_registrant_list.php?regatta_id=2575&custom_report_id=2

The new ratings after Rum Race 7 have been calculated and posted at:

http://www.regattanetwork.com/clubmgmt/applet_registrant_list.php?regatta_id=2575&custom_report_id=2

If you'd like to join the GBCA Club Handicap for the Rum Race series, please register (free) at:

http://www.regattanetwork.com/clubs/gbca.html

Registration is available online at:http://www.regattanetwork.com/clubs/gbca.html

Starts at 0900 at the GBCA office.  Discussion of the Racing Rules of Sailing, Race Committee Actions and Basic Strategy.  Lunch, Q&A and then it's off to sail in 2010 Rum Race #1.

We will assign an experienced racer to help new skippers get their boat around the course and place new crew on race boats.  

GBCA is not really a cruising club.  It?s pretty much always been about racing.  The club was formed in 1947 by a fleet of six Stout Fellas plus an assortment of four or five other cruising yachts, and was known as the Stout Fella Organization of Galveston Bay.  I guess that?s the way people talked back in the 40?s.  The next year, the SFOGB, as it were, became the Galveston Bay Cruising Association.  ?Cruising?, because it was a bunch of guys that wanted to race cruising boats.  Back then, the only organized racing in these parts was basically in one-design dinghys.  

As we now know, for a variety of cruising boats to compete on the race course, you need a handicap rule.  There have been many over the years.  The CCA rule was one that was popular back then.  CCA stood for Cruising Club of America, so you can now imagine someone coming up with the name Galveston Bay Cruising Association for our club.  Over the years, various handicapping schemes have come in and out of favor.  Most folks will bitch about whichever system is in place, unless, of course, they are winning under it.  And yet, I find myself trying to create a new one.  

I guess I should talk for a minute about various handicapping and measurement rules:

First, there is what?s known as One-Design.  In one-design racing, the boats are exactly the same, at least theoretically.  Stars, Ensigns, Etchells, Flying Scots, what have you.  It?s considered the purest form of yacht racing since, again, theoretically, boat handling, tactics and strategy rule the day.  But, since none of these boats can cruise the Caribbean, take the family on a weekender or even a comfortable day-sail for that matter, we?ll not dwell on them.

Then there are measurement rules, the most famous of these being the 12-Meter rule of the old America?s Cup boats.   If you?ve seen any of these 12-Meter Boats, you?ll note that they are WAY more than 12 meters long.  12 meters is actually the answer to a formula that takes waterline, sail area, displacement, mid-girth and blah, blah, blah and the answer to that: life, the universe and everything is 12.  

The modern term for these type rules is a ?Development Rule?, since it allows designers to come up with all sorts of innovations, providing the end result fits into this particular box.  Over time the boats asymptotically approach the most perfectly efficient, in-bred sailing machine that fits in the box.  

Similar rules come and go:

ORC
Midget or MORC
IOR
IMS
Americap ? Sounds patriotic
IRC ? in popular use now

New rules are good.  Folks get tired of the old rules, especially if they weren?t winning under them.  New and innovative, Handicap or Measurement or Box rules, keep boat builders busy.  Everybody wants new boats, especially people like me, who like to buy the latest in yacht building technology, after about ten years of depreciation, of course.  

These various systems apply to maybe ten to twenty percent of the yacht racing world, at best.  The rest, at least in this country, are racing under PHRF, the Performance Handicap Racing Fleet.  The goal of PHRF is to rate the boat, based on local observed performance.  This is why the same boat that rates 150 here, may rate 140 (10 seconds per mile faster) in San Francisco.  

PHRF is the best, most affordable system we have at the local weekend warrior level.  It?s a cheap, easily administrated system that, for 25 bucks a year gives a lot of value.  Since it?s administrated locally, ratings can be appealed based on local performance.  PHRF does, however, assume some things that are rather distasteful to the cruising sailor who would like to occasionally race his boat.

One thing it assumes is no extra weight: No anchor on the bow.  No BBQ.  No Bimini.  No Dinghy Davits.  No tools, extra clothes, spare parts, fuel, water, water guns, guns of any nature,  Mardi Gras beads, grass skirts or coconut bras.  No Calphalon cookware, TV, DVD player, surround sound, full liquor locker or case of 2003 Caymus Cabernet? Nada.   No credit for any of this.  No fun.  

It also assumes a perfectly clean and fair bottom, keel and rudder as well as optimum sails for the conditions.  These are not 5-10-year old Dacron sails.  It gives a small credit for a fixed 2 or 3 bladed prop that does not pay.

Another thing that PHRF assumes is perfect crew work, tactics and strategy.  Sorry Grandma.  Would you mind watching the dog for awhile?  You kids be good and mind Mommy until Daddy and his crew get back to the dock.  He?ll order pizza later if he?s not too tired, sunburned or drunk.  This is wrong.  The whole family should all be able to get tired, sunburned and drunk together, local regulations permitting.

Again, PHRF is a great system which runs on the effort of experienced volunteers who have a passion for yacht racing and seek to make things fair for all.  It?s just that under that system, there?s no way to give racer/cruisers who are more on the cruising end of the spectrum, credit for all those things I just mentioned.

I?ve wondered why the majority of boats on the dock don?t race and though I think I?ve begun to answer my own question, I still ask other sailors that won?t consider it, WHY?  Racing is a wonderful experience and the very best way to learn to sail in the most seamanlike manner possible.  Being able to sail your boat at optimum efficiency on any given point of sail and to execute timely strategic maneuvers is not the province of elite yacht racing snobbery.  It is, in fact, just good seamanship.  Just like dragging four fenders of various sizes all over Galveston Bay, is not good seamanship.  

In reality, I?ve found that most every sailor has a little bit of racer in them, whether they care to admit it or not.  A typical example is the morning I was getting ready to head out for a day of race committee work on a local regatta.  One of the old hands around the marina says ?what are you up to today??  ?Oh, I?m going out to help run a sailboat race.?  ?Yeah, well all that racing crap?s just not for me.?  ?Yeah, I know.?  ?Say, what kind of boat do you have anyway??  ?It?s an Islander 36 and a damn good one.  It?s a hell of a boat boy.  I wouldn?t trade it for nothin?.  I?d sail that boat anywhere?  Well, I guess everybody likes their boat.  ?So, if you were out sailing and an identical Islander 36  came up from behind and just rolled right over the top of you like you were anchored, how would that set with you??  ?Oh, Bullshit on that!  I?d tighten that jib and pull that main up?He ain?t passing me like that.?  Ah ha!  A latent racer!  A one-design champion at that, with the fastest Islander 36 on the planet!  But, I digress.

Even among ?serious? racers, the thing I?ve noticed about everyone is that you can?t be DFL in every race for long without questioning the whole program.  That goes for the $500K race boat full of Kevlar and Carbon, right down to the Center cockpit Crab Crusher 32.  You?ve got to get a little taste of silver every now and then, or at least be in the hunt.  This sort of thing is what got me thinking about a more cruiser friendly handicap racing system.  So, I have come up with the ?GBCA Club Handicap.?

The GBCA Club Handicap is based on 100% observed performance as measured by finish times.  No matter what the configuration or payload of your boat is, as long as it remains consistent, it will eventually achieve a sort of parity with the other boats in the class.  In fact, a key component is keeping your boat consistent.  No fair racing for three in a row and then taking off the 45lb CQR and 200 feet of chain and draining your fuel and water tanks.  You just sail like you normally would.

The way it works is like this.  Each boat will start out with a handicap.  If you have a PHRF certificate, we?ll use that.  If not, we?ll assign a rating.  Don?t like that rating, don?t worry.  Most boats don?t like their rating.  In fact, while there are guys lined-up to protest their rating because it?s too fast, I don?t believe a boat ever came to the PHRF Committee and said ?You know, I guess my boat is rated a little slow.  Y?all should just go ahead and subtract a few seconds from me.?  I wonder why that is?

After each race, each boats handicap will be adjusted based on its performance relative to the median boat in the fleet.  I?m not going to bore you here with complex formulas, even though it?s not all that complex.  The gist of the system is: that if you lost to the middle boat, your handicap will be raised by a portion of the time in seconds/mile that you lost.  The ?portion? is a formula that takes into account the speed of the race.  On a race in 15-20 knots, the delta between boats is more significant than a five-knot-fiesta, where you might sail off into a hole for 20 minutes.  In practice, the factor should range from 15-25%.  This means that if you lost by 30 seconds per mile to the middle boat on a good seabreeze day, your handicap for the next race will be 6-7 seconds higher.  And conversely for the speed demon who beat the middle guy by 30 seconds per mile.  He gets his rating lowered 6-7 seconds.

We?re going to roll out the system as an experiment for the Icicle Series.  That will be the first 5 Saturdays of the New Year.  If all goes well with good participation, we?ll continue to use it for all regattas and series.  The Icicle Series will be free and open to the public.  After that, you?ll have to be a GBCA senior member.  

If you are interested in signing-up, send me a message through this site with details of your boat and/or its rating.  And tell your cruising dock friends about it too.

It is with great sadness that we learned of the loss of Julie Sutton after a long battle with cancer.  I know that I speak for the GBCA Board of Governors and its membership in offering our sincerest condolences to the Sutton family.  Following is a link to Julie?s obituary:

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/houstonchronicle/obituary.aspx?n=julie-curry-sutton&pid=134686145

Don?t forget to get your ballots in for the 2010 GBCA Board of Directors.  The ballots were mailed on September 26 to all senior members along with a return envelope and the snazzy new GBCA car sticker. 

All ballots must be in by November 1 to be counted.  Be sure to include your write-in choices for Yachtsman, Crewman and Sportsman of the year.

We are in the process of putting together the ballot for the 2010 GBCA Board of Governors.  Nominations are made by the Nominating Committee, in accordance with the Bylaws.  As always, we value input from our members, so please e-mail or PM me if you are a senior member and would like to run for the Board.

http://gbca.org/RumRace.html

What's your favorite everyday mixing rum for cocktails?