Dues
Annual Meeting
Handicapping Changes: January, October, June
from spring 1999: Why Pay PHRF
The Pacific Handicap Racing Fleet of the NW is the organization that handicaps our racing keel boats. You need a PHRF handicap to race in our flying sails classes, all but D Class. A PHRF NW handicap allows you to race on handicap anywhere where on the Sound, the Straits, the Columbia River, Alaska ... Pretty much anywhere in the Northwest. To have a current PHRF handicap one’s PHRF dues must be current.
Dues notices were mailed last month to all current members. If you received one, you need to return it with your check to keep your handicap current and valid. Your 2008 dues are are good only until January first. Note that dues have not increased and are the same as last year.
At least we think we sent a notice to all current PHRF members. If you are one and did not get said notice, contact Mary at sailorgirl1@msn.com.
They will check for valid handicaps at the Duwamish Head Race. If you are racing the Southern Sound Series, make sure to get your dues paid early. Here at SSSS we give you a little longer to pay, a grace period until the Toliva Shoal Race. At that point we start checking for SSSS races. But really, what are you waiting for? If you wait you will loose the form. Send it back paid when it comes and be done with it. Having everyone paid before we check makes scoring easier.
New Racers, if you are thinking about starting to race in, or move up to, a PHRF class, now is the time to join. This is the start of the year and the dues will not be prorated. You get the most for your money now. You can even get thirteen months of membership for the price of twelve if you join in early December.
To join PHRF and get your boat handicapped, see our Handicapper, Rafe Beswick. He will ask you some questions, maybe measure your sails, and fill out a form that will determine your handicap. And he will take your money. Then he sends it all in to the PHRF office. Your boat with handicap then shows up on the members list on the PHRF web site. You get a certificate. This can take a few days to process. For racing here with SSSS, once Rafe has everything, have him e-mail your handicap to the scorer and you can race that day.
Steve Worcester, Star 6932
PHRF NW held our annual meeting January 20 at the Tacoma Yacht Club. Directors, including yours truly, met mid level. Handicappers met in the Crows Nest, the top room. We all ate lunch up there. Great view of a sunny blue Sound full of white caps.
The Board meeting was pretty uneventful and non controversial. We approved Mary’s contract, the budget, and re elected mostly the same Officers. David Blakemore, CYC, stepped down as Secretary/Treasurer as he was retiring from the Board after years of service on it. We voted to make him an honorary PHRF member. The Past President took on his duties. We also discussed foreign exchange and dues in Canadian dollars.
At the end of the day, we met in joint session with the Handicappers. Alan Grim, Chief Handicapper, reported that since they abandoned the “new” protocol last year, the Handicappers have been working to develop an better alternative to accomplish the same objectives. They think they are now there. Or close enough they plan to stop making major changes long enough to see how things settle out. They still want to establish a one design rating for boats with class certificates, but may wait to do so.
They also suggested we do not publish the Handbook but have you get the information off the web. I wonder what SSSS Members think?
Steve Worcester, Star 6932
The fall Handicappers’ meeting was a little late this year, occurring on the 8th of December at the OYC clubhouse. Thanks to Bob Connolly, Jim Lengenfelder, and especially Terry Anderson in helping get the clubhouse scheduled and opened. In spite of a little unexpected snow, 14 handicappers from locations as distant as Nanaimo and Portland showed up to talk about, well, handicapping. The following are outcomes from the meeting:
1. A new Application for Rating form will soon be available that can be filled out and submitted electronically.
2. The handicappers voted to adopt the I.S.A.F definitions for mainsail girths and revise the standard mainsail area calculation and adjust the mainsail rating adjustment table to counteract the rating changes that would have otherwise resulted from the new sail measurement protocol. The net result should be that nobody’s rating will change.
3. Procedures for T ratings were clarified: Handicappers will have the authority to change base ratings for T-rated boats up to 9 seconds without Chief Handicapper or council approval. In cases where there are several boats of the same type with different Handicappers, changes will have to be done on a consensus basis, or with a decision from the Chief Handicapper if no consensus can be reached.
4. A proposal to clarify the penalty for an altered hoist for a spinnaker was adopted; under this proposal there would be a penalty for increasing H, the spinnaker hoist, above the base boat ISP, the standard spinnaker hoist, but no additional penalty for increasing the size of the spinnaker until the spinnaker area exceeds H * SLU.
5. After considerable discussion, the Council moved to reintroduce One Design Ratings. At least initially, this will only apply to boats with national or international class organizations that are recognized by US Sailing or ISF and would only be available to boat with current class certificates. In order to actually do this, the directors will have to vote to amend the bylaws at the Annual General Meeting scheduled for January.
6. The J-30, Hobi33-1, and CM1200 all had base rating changes done to counteract the effect of adopting the new spinnaker protocol. These boats should not see a change in as-sailed ratings.
The Annual General Meeting, Directors and Handicappers together under one roof, is scheduled for Sunday, 20 January 2008 from 1000 to 1600 at the Tacoma Yacht Club.
John Martens, Djinn
The handicapping business has been pretty calm over the summer with just a few new Applications for Rating and a few change forms being processed. With the first meeting of the season just a couple of days off, I am hoping to see an upturn in activity as folks get ready for the fall races.
The Handicappers Council met in Victoria on 19 August to discuss some of the extant issues left from the Formerly New Protocol. Attendance was light, I actually missed this one, but good progress was made. I am only going to touch on a couple of topics here but detailed minutes of this meeting are available on the PHRF web site. Of particular interest to me were the following:
The next Handicappers’ Meeting will be held in November. I am hoping to get permission from OYC to have it here. If you have a rating appeal you would like considered at the November meeting, we need to propose it at least 30 days prior the meeting date; that means I need to know early in October.
In closing I have a request. A concern that is voiced at every handicappers meeting is that we are losing racers because of our handicapping system. One camp argues that we go to far accommodating casual racers and lose the serious racers and the other argues the opposite. Other perceived problems with the way PHRF operates are raised as well. I would be interested in hearing from those of you who race as well as those of you who don’t: what works, what doesn’t, what could we do better, and, for those of you who don’t race, what might entice you to start or return to racing? If you have thoughts on this, please respond to my e-mail account at handicapper@ssssclub.com.
As always, if you need help measuring a sail or advice on handicaps, give me a call or send me an e-mail. Hope to see you on the water.
Thanks, John Martens, Singularity
You may recall that in its meeting of 21 January 2007, the Handicappers’ Council voted to abandon the New Protocol, at least as a monolithic body of changes to the way PHRF-NW does handicapping. At the same time, the council affirmed its commitment to reviewing its protocols to address those issues that had motivated the development of the New Protocol in the first place. Since the New Protocol is no longer an operative term, I will henceforth refer to it as the body of work previously known as the New Protocol, or perhaps the Former New Protocol, or just the FNP for short.
As you may also recall it was decided several years ago that the handicappers needed to meet at least three times per year to be more responsive to the needs of the membership. So on 29 April 2007, the handicappers met in Seattle to do some handicapper work. At this meeting action was taken on various proposals that result in incremental changes in the way we do handicapping. These changes became official with the 22 May 2007 posting of the meeting minutes to the official PHRF-NW website. In addition to the minutes of the meeting, found under meetings, you will find a section called PHRF New Protocol Implementation Change Notices on the home page. It is through these Protocol Change Notices that protocol changes will be communicated. I encourage you to read the minutes and the PCNs to get the official scoop. I will do a quick summary.
As a result of these actions, I will be reviewing all our boats to see if there are any that are affected. The decision was made to postpone publishing these minutes until after Swiftsure to avoid confusion. It is not the intent of these changes that individual handicaps change a whole lot. Clearly, eliminating the A and S sail penalty will have a big impact on some ratings and the changes in the code 5 band for spinnakers could have a 3 second impact in come cases. However, in general, the intent is that there not be much change in rating due to the changes in protocol.
If you have questions, feel free to send me an email or give me a call. Good racing!
John Martens, Singularity
The PHRF homepage; Check your rating, or your competitions.
I was asked at the SSSS Board Meeting why we pay dues to PHRF. This took me aback because I thought everyone understood that PHRF is essential to our racing program. All our boats are different. How can we run races without a handicap system? Of all those to be used on the Sound, PHRF is the best for our use. It is very inclusive, very easy to get measured — no haulout needed, easy to use, and costs considerably less. It is now about the only game in town.
They understood that. But since Bill Maclean gives out handicaps, why do we need them, PHRF?
The problem with this line of thought is that it is not really true. Bill does not make up handicaps. He administers the PHRF system that gives the handicap.
Bill might well be able to rip-off their data and methods and do it “ourselves”, though I do not know if Bill has the time and/or wants to. I do know that this would not serve the Club as well as PHRF does now.
The PHRF database is much larger than any we could maintain on our own. It is regularly updated. It will usually have a rating for new boats, which we may have no knowledge of. Further it comes with the advice and opinions of sailors all over the NW.
This cuts down on the squabbling. We would never hear the end of it if your rating was based only on Bill’s opinion, and different here than in Tacoma, and different still in Seattle, and you were not sure about Bellingham. Further, if you do have a rating dispute PHRF supplies an organized procedure to make your case to someone out of the Club.
Lastly, and, from SSSS’s point of view anyway, I do mean lastly, it enables us to race all over the Sound and to host events like the Toliva Shoal Race. This is fun, and I do recommend that you take part. It is the best part of PHRF for some. But from the Club’s point of view this is just a bonus.
Most important to the Club is that we need PHRF to run our races. PHRF NW is a volunteer organization made up of racers, us, that runs at cost. If we, the users, fail to support it, it may not be there for us.
Steve Worcester, Sugar Magnolia
The PHRF homepage has been up dated and improved.
Check your rating, or your competitions, at http://www.phrf-nw.org.