Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac scoring - Final results posted

by Greg Freeman on 2 Sep 2011 Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac 2011 final results are now available online. Chicago Yacht Club have provided details of the process used to rescore the race:

We are pleased to announce that after a great deal of manual labor, including a manual review of all of the original results and manually rescoring the race, the final results for the 2011 Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac, presented by Veuve Clicquot, are now on our website.

A few words of explanation are in order as 2011 was a most unusual year and this is reflected in the scores. Please read this letter carefully as the changes to the scores are somewhat complex. Below, we have tried to explain in detail, by using representative examples, what we have done based on the instructions we were given by our judges.

• More than twenty-five boats sought redress for various reasons; most of these were for going to the aid of vessels in distress.
• The Protest Committee (PC) reviewed all of these requests carefully and awarded redress in almost all cases.
• They then instructed the Race Committee on how the scores should be calculated.
• What the PC said was that if a boat that had scored in a certain place was moved down by virtue of a boat correcting over it based on redress being given, then both boats would share the higher place.
• This means that no boats will be moved down in the scoring. But there may be instances when there are 'blank spots' which happens when a boat is not moved up if the place above it is vacated by redress being applied to the boat that was in that position. See examples below.
• These changes are based on the instructions from the PC and are consistent with the RRS. (See RRS Appendix A6.2, which was applied to the 2011 Race to Mackinac.)

Section Scoring Example:
The boat Vanda III was first in Section in J/109s. The boat Merengue was third in Section. However, when redress was applied for Merengue, Merengue would have displaced Vanda III, moving Vanda III to second and Merengue would have been in first. The PC’s instructions are that both Vanda III and Merengue will share First Place in J/109s.

In this section there are two boats sharing first place. Merengue was originally in third place. Third place is now vacant. Full Tilt, which was originally in fourth place is sharing second place with Northstar, therefore fourth place is also vacant. Per the RRS, a boat does not automatically move up to an empty space if the one above it is now empty.
There are several sections, including 40.7s, Section 4, and others, where 'place sharing' is the result of applying redress per the PC’s instructions.

Overall/Division Scoring Example:
In Overall Division scoring, there are also instances of place sharing. Most notable is the Mackinac Cup Division where Usual Suspect and Fast Tango share the Overall win for the Division. There are other instances further down the list where a place is shared.

'Missing Places' in Overall Scoring Example:
There are a few instances where there appear to be missing scores. This is because the boat that would have originally scored in that place has moved up and this leaves a vacant place. An example is Turning Point and Power Tripp in the Trophy Division. Originally Power Tripp was scored as 48th Overall and Turning Point was 49th Overall. When Turning Point’s redress is applied, both boats share 48th Overall. In this case Raven which was 50th Overall remains in 50th (no redress applicable) and there is no boat in 49th place Overall which is blank.

As you can see, this has been a significant effort and a lot of thought and man hours have gone into calculating the scores by hand. Our computer scoring system does not anticipate this kind of extraordinary circumstance and as a result a complete manual review and rescoring was necessary.

Finally a word about Prizes, particularly Brag Flags and Trophies. When the Brag Flags were given out on the Island some of you may have gotten what now turns out to be the incorrect award. We will fix that. Over the coming weeks we will reach out to each of the Section and Division prize recipients where changes have been made and make sure that you have the correct flag. We will also order the correct trophies which will be presented at the Awards Dinner on November 5, at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. And, with the results now finalized, we can score the Inter-Club Challenge. This will be done as quickly as possible and the announcement will be made as soon as that effort is completed.

We want to personally thank you for your patience with us as we have worked through this issue. This has been a most challenging race from a number of standpoints and we appreciate the on-going support of our sailors and friends. We look forward to seeing you all in November for the Awards Dinner and on the starting line on July 21, 2012.

Sincerely,

Greg Final Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac website