The Racing Rules of Sailing
Addressing the DNC Allocation Nightmare — Long Series Club Racing
Setting the DNC value for long series club racing (6–9 months, racing every Saturday) is a constant balancing act between Participation and Performance. For low point scoring - say you start the season with 34 entrants and expect a maximum of 15 boats starting in any of the 15 planned races. The usual options are:
(1) a "hot" Entrants + 1 value, e.g. 35, rising or falling as the season progresses;
(2) Starters + 2, 3, 4 etc, recalculated race by race (Say Starters +4)
After allowing for two discards, the arguments start:
Under option (1), high performers who miss one or two races beyond their discards say: "It's unfair — I'm carrying 35 (or 70 for two missed races), I'm out of contention."
Under option (2), the moderate performers who rarely miss a race, and give the club great support say: "It's grossly unfair — last week's blow saw only 6 boats start and 3 DNF, so the no-shows got Starters + 4 = 10, less than what I scored finishing 12th in a 15-boat fleet the week before."
One proposed solution is a fixed DNC value, say 21, agreed by the club at the season's outset, but open to adjustment (as season goes).
This shifts the balance between participation and performance toward a fairer compromise. Sailres, the package we use, doesn't support a genuinely fixed DNC value natively. Do other packages????
A workaround we're testing in simulations is setting DNC = Entrants + (-14), ( a negative value) giving 21 when entrants = 35.
Testing confirms Sailres accepts this (!!!!). The value will still drift as entrants join later in the season (e.g. becoming 24 or 25), but simulations suggest this remains an 'effective' compromise — letting high performers stay in contention with consistent results, carrying 21 or 25 per missed race instead of 35 or 39. The moderate performers have the results for more races sailed - better respected.
Any suggestions for this => Note: Long Series Club Racing; Not Regattas.
(1) a "hot" Entrants + 1 value, e.g. 35, rising or falling as the season progresses;
(2) Starters + 2, 3, 4 etc, recalculated race by race (Say Starters +4)
After allowing for two discards, the arguments start:
Under option (1), high performers who miss one or two races beyond their discards say: "It's unfair — I'm carrying 35 (or 70 for two missed races), I'm out of contention."
Under option (2), the moderate performers who rarely miss a race, and give the club great support say: "It's grossly unfair — last week's blow saw only 6 boats start and 3 DNF, so the no-shows got Starters + 4 = 10, less than what I scored finishing 12th in a 15-boat fleet the week before."
One proposed solution is a fixed DNC value, say 21, agreed by the club at the season's outset, but open to adjustment (as season goes).
This shifts the balance between participation and performance toward a fairer compromise. Sailres, the package we use, doesn't support a genuinely fixed DNC value natively. Do other packages????
A workaround we're testing in simulations is setting DNC = Entrants + (-14), ( a negative value) giving 21 when entrants = 35.
Testing confirms Sailres accepts this (!!!!). The value will still drift as entrants join later in the season (e.g. becoming 24 or 25), but simulations suggest this remains an 'effective' compromise — letting high performers stay in contention with consistent results, carrying 21 or 25 per missed race instead of 35 or 39. The moderate performers have the results for more races sailed - better respected.
Any suggestions for this => Note: Long Series Club Racing; Not Regattas.
Created: Yesterday 16:14
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Sailwave does allow DNC to be a fixed number of points.
Sailwave also has a choice of different, what are called methods, for allocating points to scoring codes
One that you might be consider is ' Points for the place of the (max number of boats that came to the start area in any one race + N places)'
Kind regards,
Huw
Also, The number of scores to count is the the 1st whole number above the total number of races completed in the series.
This provides a balance between the “average sailors” that turn up each week and the “hot shots” that can’t race each week or choose not to.
It works for our club where we have been using this format for many many years but as always it is a big of a fudge and you can argue both ways about whether it is fair or not.
Eg: if after dropping 30% of races across the entire season for each boat, if there are any DNC’s remaining, that boat is not eligible for scoring.
Essentially promoting attendance whilst allowing for people to take time away when they can’t race.
Once boats are deemed eligible, the DnCs become the value of the number of all eligible boats +1 and then actual scoring is completed (as per your regular rules for drops etc).
I don't follow the OP's "Option 2" complaint. Scores are relative amongst the fleet, not absolute to some benchmark. If the complainer finished last of the 3 finishers this week (6 starters), then he got 7 more points than the no-shows. Last week, he finished 12th, but the no-shows got 19 points - again, 7 more points. Who cares if the DNC score was a 10 or a 19? The net gain was 7 points for both races!
Regatta Model — DNC Entrants + 1; with 23 entrants = [24]
Point 1. => A Fast boat carrying 4 DNCs — can finish no better than 13th, despite averaging 2nd in every race it sails.
Point 2. => Medium, Slow and Very Slow boats carrying relatively few DNCs occupy 8 of the top 12 places. The seasonal result therefore becomes heavily influenced by participation. Note that the Fast and Medium scores are idealist (season average of 2 and 4), so they will be unlikely to feature with worse scores, so the Slow and Mediums will move up the ladder.
JB-Best Option — DNC fixed at 8 + 4 = 12 --The outcome changes significantly.
Point 1. => The top nine places are occupied by Fast and Medium boats carrying between zero and three DNCs over the season (not days)
Point 2. => A Fast boat carrying four DNCs can still place well, but this is an extreme example because it must average 2nd in every race it sails.
Point 3. => Slow and Very Slow boats do not appear until around 8th/9th place unless their actual race performance improves above an average of 6 & 8 respectively.
Point 4. => Participation still has an important influence, but sailors carrying two or three additional DNCs can remain competitive if their sailing results are outstanding.
There are two 'levers' the OA/RC can use to encourage participation in a long series:
Tweaking these levers only works within a margin around what the fleet wants to do in any case.
I think the dominant driver is number of discards. I would suggest that one discard every 5 or 6 races is pretty reasonable.
In a long series of 24 races, with an expected race participation rate of 15 out of 34 entrants I would suggest that:
At my club we run a Winter and a Summer Series, each of about 25 races.
We also encourage Casual Entries, race by race as an alternative to Series Entries: Casual Entries are eligible for race prizes but, obviously not for Series Pointscores.
Using this structure, we've never seen any need to depart from the RRS A5.3 scoring.
In the simulation discards are a phase shift, we normally have 20-25% discards and provide DUT averages for boats away representing the club at major regattas. I agree its is a balance and our approach is to be explicit as possible in setting rules which are always and compromise. Thanks again for the feedback. Cheers, Have Fun!