This radio sailing sport can be a little daunting to get into, don’t you find? Quite a few barriers to entry !!

Honestly we occasionally get days when the person at the front of the fleet seems 10-15% faster than the group of boats at the back. It feels like there’s a decade of apprenticeship ahead – ha ha !!

Are you a golfer? It’s not unknown in other sports to have personal handicaps and for all the right reasons of encouraging the newcomers. Certainly in the Flying Fifteen keelboat fleet we have had personal handicap programmes in the past and they are currently trying dividing the fleet into four groups – gold, silver, bronze and standard with scoring and prizes in each sub-fleet. You have to minimise admin though.

Surprise, surprise ….!! There are plenty of radio sailing clubs experimenting with the same idea. If you go this way though, your Club needs something with minimal overhead for the Fleet Scoring Rep – something very light touch, with almost no work!!

If you have used the MYA HMS Scoring system, you’ll know what I mean!

Here’s a couple of ideas that have come into my inbox in the last month:

From Club 1:-

The two main handicapping methods used for radio sailing are a) apply an adjusting factor to the helm’s results or b) stagger the individual start times.

1. Method a) requires no change to how races are run so the finishing order can continue to be used to produce the results in exactly the same standard scoring format as at present but can also be used with additional calculation to apply the handicap factors and tabulate the results in the alternative handicap scoring format. 

2. Method b) involves a staggered start time sequence, i.e. yachts start at different times based upon a handicap rating, the idea being for all yachts to finish at the same time. The  finishing results as recorded are already in handicap format without further calculation. It does mean however that the finishing results are not useable for the standard scratch series, consequently this method requires separate races to be dedicated to run on a handicap basis. 

3. Under Method b) a dedicated handicap 5th Series might be run in parallel with the other four standard series, e.g. in a calendar period of 13 weeks there could be say 10 standard race mornings and three dedicated handicap mornings which would count towards a rolling annual handicap series. This would give four standard scratch series as at present (but with 10 results in lieu of 13 in each as has been suggested) and one annual handicap series with up to 12 results to win the Handicap Champion of the Year trophy. 

From Club 2:

Then there is the well proven system at Guildford MYC:-

Click to access GMYC_Handicap_System.pdf

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