The Bosun
When someone with the credibility and offshore achievements of Bouwe Bekking takes a position on handicapping, then we must all lend an ear. He ended his submission by asking what others think of weather-model routing as an active factor in setting handicaps for ocean races.
Well, here’s my two cents worth:
The first thing we have to concede is that no handicapping regime for anything longer than a 6-hour race can hope to be consistently fair, or reliable. The longer the race, the greater the impact weather variables will have on relative performance. That is an unavoidable part of the sport (except in the specialist area of one-design offshore racing).
As Bouwe points out, even the most sophisticated weather models can be wrong over a long stretch of time, so the routing predictions based on those models will also be wrong.
But here’s the real question: are handicaps that take predicted weather into account more likely to produce fair results than handicaps only based on the dimensions of a boat and its rig, displacement, and any other measurable factors that contribute to performance?
Navigators will probably answer ‘yes’ because making tactical decisions based on their interpretation of the weather and sea state are key components of their role. To my mind there’s value in that view. Anything that might further refine what is, let’s face it, a system that cannot avoid the impact of variables beyond our control should be welcomed.
But the fundamental flaw in ‘empirical’ handicap approaches – including weather-routing models – is that they assume all boats in a fleet will be sailed with equal competence.
That is, of course, nonsense. Yet, to my knowledge, the one attempt to reflect those major inequalities has been the introduction of ‘Corinthian’ divisions to separate the pros from the amateurs.
Nevertheless, Bekking makes some good points. Only a surly old shellback like me would note that complaints about handicapping always seem to come from the runner-up, never from the winner.
The Bosun
