Thread: Beth Portsmouth Number

I'd say go for the same as Laser Radial.

OK	Dinghy	1109	[1]	96.5	[5]
Laser Radial	Dinghy	1110	[1]	96.7	[5]
Leader	Dinghy	1115	[16]

The thing with the comparison with Lasers is that at the top of the fleet the standard is very high indeed. And that influences the Portsmouth number.

I do say BETH with my "on average better skills" can race equal with a standard club level laser. But if you have some hotshots in your club ... the gap will be too big.

I'd say BETH is probably more likely to be around 1200.

What I'd say to the Club is start off equal with the Laser Radial ... but then it will probably be closer to the 1200 Portsmouth mark.

MIK

Thanks! That should work fine. It sounds like the racing (especially this one) is relatively casual.

Well ... it always starts that way.

That sounds fair enough to me. A proper Portsmouth number is not possible as these numbers are worked out from lots of fleet racing against other boats, and there simply are not enough Beths going around courses, yet!

I am the handicapper in our club, and these yardsticks can be a bit of a "suck it and see" thing. I also use the PY numbers for applying personal handicaps and it works very well for that.

Basically, each point of the PY number works out to be approximately 4 seconds over the course of a race lasting an hour. So if you are consistently behind the Laser Radial by around a minute, you'd need to have your PY increased by 15, and vice versa of course.

Things change for different conditions, but let's not go there!