Average Lap Decaying Breeze

Hi, there seemed to be a thread on this a couple of years ago but there didn't seem to be a conclusion.  The scenario is as follows.  We use Average Lap racing extensively at our club for handicap racing.  At a recent Cup race we had a steady 7-8 knots of breeze for 2 laps. The slower handicap boats were stopped after 2 and the faster ones went on to do a third.  However, during this 3rd lap the wind decayed significantly to 2-3 knots and it took the faster boats as long to do the final lap as the total of their first 2.  This had the result of distorting the results as some of those boats finished on their 2nd laps, (even some of the same class) were ahead on corrected time of those that did 3.  The race committee decided to put all those who did 3 laps ahead of those who only did 2.  However, that seems to penalise those boats who only did 2 but were sailing to or better than their handicap.  Times were taken for all the laps of all the boats so what I would have thought would be fairer and the way to do this would be to roll back all the results so that everyone completed just 2.  However, is there a precedent or guidance here on average lap on what the right approach should be?  Thanks

Surely the whole point of average lap racing is that all boats race for roughly the same length of time, and therefore in the same winds.

If all boats do three laps obviously the slow boats will be out longer and if the wind or tide changes that will affect the result. But with average lap racing the objective is to finish all boats at roughly the same time, so that event doesn't arise. The downside is that laps tend to need to be fairly small.

as Kaz said above but I think you would need to make some sort of amendment to your sailing instructions in which it allows the race officer at his discretion to roll back laps if conditions change significantly (this only works if accurate lap times have been taken for every single boat)

Originally posted by DoubleTrouble The surprising thing seems to be that there doesn't seem to be anything written down on this by RYA/Sailwave/Clubs etc

I don't find that surprising at all.

At our club we do average laps and the laps are short anyway on the puddle apart from when an RO sets so-called "Olympic courses" of sausages and triangles or trapezoids and triangles which are just a procession. However we don't necessarily finish the lead boat first, rather we choose a point between groups of boats to hoist the blue flag and begin finishing as boats cross the club line on their laps (it's in the SI). This way the slow boats often finish before the faster ones and there is rarely more than 10 minutes between first finish and last finish. As fastest boat, we usually do at least one more lap than the majority, several of which we have to beat by about 9 minutes in an hour race!

Edited by patj - 25 Jul 16 at 9:01am