Racing and Ratings
If a trailer yacht is to race outside of protected waters it will require a current Rating Certificate and likely also a Safety Certificate. Even if not built to a measurement rule, the boat will need to be measured to the rule stipulated in the Notice of Race to obtain a rating (handicap). For some national, international and other yacht racing events, rules such as those of the International Racing Certificate known as the IRC or the IRC sports boat rule SBR may be specified and are examples of such rules, others exist in different countries. Note that the measurement rules are different from the Sailing Rules which stipulate how races are run and the rights of yachts in different situations.
There are other handicap systems of a simplified measurement type designed to allow very different yachts of diverse designs to compete on an equal basis. This is particularly so for trailer sailers that may race in trailer sailer fleets or in mixed fleets. In some countries a Performance Handicap Racing Fleet or PHRF may be used to rate trailer sailers, such as in NZ and in the USA and Canada In other countries, the Class Based Handicap or CBH measurement system is used for trailer sailers, such as in Australia and also in NZ
Rather than from a measurement rule, Yardstick as in Portsmouth Yardstick is used in the UK is a way of rating different classes of trailer yachts relative to each other .These are adjusted annually at a state or regional level. At a club level, starting from a CBH or Yardstick rating a Performance Based Handicap or PBH may be used, such as PBH. This attempts to measure the relative performance of a particular yacht and crew against other yachts and crews either of the same type of other type. Clubs will often run an event or season championship based only upon a CBH rating together with a handicap winner based upon a regularly adjusted PBH figure for each yacht and crew. In theory the PBH which is adjusted after each race gives each boat an equal chance of winning each race.
Read more about this topic: Trailer Sailer
Famous quotes containing the word racing:
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)