Significant changes made to Portsmouth number list

by Emma Slater on 4 Mar 2011 For the second year running the Portsmouth Number (PN) list has undergone some significant changes for the upcoming racing season.

2011 changes include an increase in classes achieving either Primary or Secondary Yardstick status. This change makes little difference to the everyday sailing carried out by clubs up and down the country but does affect which classes are used for adjustment and which aren’t, which in turn should affect the returns for the 2012 list and beyond.

Another significant change is the separation of the Cruiser data from the Dinghy, Keelboat and Multihull lists as Bas Edmonds, RYA Technical Manager, explains: 'We have seen a significant drop in returns from clubs racing Cruisers and the Portsmouth Yardstick Group felt that a different approach was required this year to rejuvenate this important section of our sport'.

The Cruiser PN list will continue to provide ranking for classes as PY, SY or RN numbers but will also include advice on every other boat that the RYA have received data for. The effect of this is such that the PN list for Cruisers increases from giving guidance on just over 40 boats to over 1000 different boat configurations. The idea behind this is to offer clubs with a starting point for a wider variety of boats.

'There has been a down turn in the number of returns received by the RYA’s Technical Department this year compared to previous years, but this has been made up by the quality of the returns being received from those clubs using the RYA Race Analysis website.

'We anticipated that with the on-going use of the RYA Race Analysis website and these new changes the number of returns will also increase along with the continued submission of quality returns', concluded Bas.

The RYA Race Analysis website looks at the actual results of each clubs race and makes an analysis on the Portsmouth Numbers used and returns proposals to the clubs on adjustments that the club may wish to consider to provide fairer racing.

The Portsmouth Yardstick List can be found on the RYA Website with the Dinghy, Multihull and Keelboat lists being available from Friday 04 March and the revised Cruiser List within the next couple of weeks.
RYA website