Yacht Racing 2008

Dear Thursday Evening Racer

This year we reviewed the handicap bands for Thursday KBs. We looked at the 2007 Late Series and found that:

- in Class 1 of 15 boats that raced more than one race, only one did not have an IRC certificate.
- in class 2, 17 boats raced more than one race and only 4 of these had an IRC certificate.

This indicated that in numbers Class 1 was very strongly IRC based, and Class 2 strongly Club Handicap based.

Running dual handicap systems is do-able, but somewhat complicated in handling results and prizes and we felt tends to defocus the results. We therefore decided to simplify things and make Class 1 solely IRC based and Class 2 solely club handicap based. We also split the old gaffers and similar boats out of Class 4 into the separate "Classic Class"

When we announced this, some people objected to the handicap change saying this was not a good move.
For various and different reasons they did NOT want to race under IRC (Class 1), or  DID want to race under IRC (Class 2).

We don’t know how widespread is this feeling. We do want Thursday Keelboat racing to be good and fun racing for as many people as possible.

So, What do you think? Please tell us what sort of class handicap system(s) you'd like. When we have collected people's views we will arrange a brief "owners meeting" to decide what to do for the Late Series.

Please can you complete the short questionnaire, select the link for your class below. Thank you:

Chris Baldwick , Captain of Racing                           Bob Baker  Captain of Cruiser Racing