Corinthian Yacht Club of Seattle will be hosting their popular Fridays in February Speaker Series, showcasing cruising and travel experiences. The series kicks off on February 7 when local sailors Graeme and Janna Cawrse Esarey with daughters Talia and Savai recount their attempt at crossing the Northwest Passage in a refitted Open 60 raceboat, Dogbark, sailing from Seattle to the Arctic. When ice blocked their way, they decided to head for the warmer waters of Hawai’i and the South Pacific. Scott and Karen Tobiason share stories of cruising more familiar waters on February 14, covering familiar stops and new anchorages in the San Juan and Gulf Islands.
On February 21, Sarah Jones reminisces about tackling the Inside Passage solo last summer in Beyond, a 1968 Islander 37. And finally, on February 28, Steve Johnson shares experiences and lessons learned after eight times in the Van-Isle race aboard the Transpac 52, Mist. The talks will be hosted at Corinthian Yacht Club from 1800 hours to 2100 hours, free for members and $5 for non-members. A dinner prepared by Chef Catherine Weatbrook for $10 and no-host bar will open at 1800. Presentations begin at 1900 hours. Please RSVP at cycseattle.org.
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I just finished reading the article about PHRF and would like to comment on a few points made by the author. The first regards the encouragement given to time-on-time calculations of handicaps under PHRF. PHRF was designed as a simple estimate of a boat’s potential speed over a nautical mile. A distance measurement. Time-on-time essentially takes that estimated speed and converts it into a time factor. As a very smart naval architect said when looking at very curious ToT results: “Taking one approximation and multiplying by another approximation rarely results in greater accuracy.”. Particularly for boats at the extremes of the rating bands away from the base rating – O raters and above, for example – ToT results have been found to be quite distorted. So all “experts” do not agree with the theoretical improvements made by ToT handicapping, particularly in buoy racing.
My other comment is more of a humorous aside. Using a picture of Crossfire, a boat that is designed and races whenever possible under ORC or other similar measurement rule, as an exemplar of the boats for which “PHRF makes racing possible”, is more than a bit off the mark.
The third point is regarding the sport boat rating problem. Unless PHRF-NW decides to issue high and low wind range handicaps for each boat – or sport boat fleets become large enough to separate them out – the sport boat problem will remain unresolvable. Before too long, after all, we will have our first foil-assisted monohulls. The cats are already here.