The Racing Rules of Sailing
Addressing the DNC Allocation Nightmare — Long Series Club Racing
Setting the DNC value for long series club racing (6–9 months, racing every Saturday) is a constant balancing act between Participation and Performance. For low point scoring - say you start the season with 34 entrants and expect a maximum of 15 boats starting in any of the 15 planned races. The usual options are:
(1) a "hot" Entrants + 1 value, e.g. 35, rising or falling as the season progresses;
(2) Starters + 2, 3, 4 etc, recalculated race by race (Say Starters +4)
After allowing for two discards, the arguments start:
Under option (1), high performers who miss one or two races beyond their discards say: "It's unfair — I'm carrying 35 (or 70 for two missed races), I'm out of contention."
Under option (2), the moderate performers who rarely miss a race, and give the club great support say: "It's grossly unfair — last week's blow saw only 6 boats start and 3 DNF, so the no-shows got Starters + 4 = 10, less than what I scored finishing 12th in a 15-boat fleet the week before."
One proposed solution is a fixed DNC value, say 21, agreed by the club at the season's outset, but open to adjustment (as season goes).
This shifts the balance between participation and performance toward a fairer compromise. Sailres, the package we use, doesn't support a genuinely fixed DNC value natively. Do other packages????
A workaround we're testing in simulations is setting DNC = Entrants + (-14), ( a negative value) giving 21 when entrants = 35.
Testing confirms Sailres accepts this (!!!!). The value will still drift as entrants join later in the season (e.g. becoming 24 or 25), but simulations suggest this remains an 'effective' compromise — letting high performers stay in contention with consistent results, carrying 21 or 25 per missed race instead of 35 or 39. The moderate performers have the results for more races sailed - better respected.
Any suggestions for this => Note: Long Series Club Racing; Not Regattas.
(1) a "hot" Entrants + 1 value, e.g. 35, rising or falling as the season progresses;
(2) Starters + 2, 3, 4 etc, recalculated race by race (Say Starters +4)
After allowing for two discards, the arguments start:
Under option (1), high performers who miss one or two races beyond their discards say: "It's unfair — I'm carrying 35 (or 70 for two missed races), I'm out of contention."
Under option (2), the moderate performers who rarely miss a race, and give the club great support say: "It's grossly unfair — last week's blow saw only 6 boats start and 3 DNF, so the no-shows got Starters + 4 = 10, less than what I scored finishing 12th in a 15-boat fleet the week before."
One proposed solution is a fixed DNC value, say 21, agreed by the club at the season's outset, but open to adjustment (as season goes).
This shifts the balance between participation and performance toward a fairer compromise. Sailres, the package we use, doesn't support a genuinely fixed DNC value natively. Do other packages????
A workaround we're testing in simulations is setting DNC = Entrants + (-14), ( a negative value) giving 21 when entrants = 35.
Testing confirms Sailres accepts this (!!!!). The value will still drift as entrants join later in the season (e.g. becoming 24 or 25), but simulations suggest this remains an 'effective' compromise — letting high performers stay in contention with consistent results, carrying 21 or 25 per missed race instead of 35 or 39. The moderate performers have the results for more races sailed - better respected.
Any suggestions for this => Note: Long Series Club Racing; Not Regattas.
Created: 26-Aug-26 16:14
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Sailwave does allow DNC to be a fixed number of points.
Sailwave also has a choice of different, what are called methods, for allocating points to scoring codes
One that you might be consider is ' Points for the place of the (max number of boats that came to the start area in any one race + N places)'
Kind regards,
Huw
Also, The number of scores to count is the the 1st whole number above the total number of races completed in the series.
This provides a balance between the “average sailors” that turn up each week and the “hot shots” that can’t race each week or choose not to.
It works for our club where we have been using this format for many many years but as always it is a big of a fudge and you can argue both ways about whether it is fair or not.
Eg: if after dropping 30% of races across the entire season for each boat, if there are any DNC’s remaining, that boat is not eligible for scoring.
Essentially promoting attendance whilst allowing for people to take time away when they can’t race.
Once boats are deemed eligible, the DnCs become the value of the number of all eligible boats +1 and then actual scoring is completed (as per your regular rules for drops etc).
I don't follow the OP's "Option 2" complaint. Scores are relative amongst the fleet, not absolute to some benchmark. If the complainer finished last of the 3 finishers this week (6 starters), then he got 7 more points than the no-shows. Last week, he finished 12th, but the no-shows got 19 points - again, 7 more points. Who cares if the DNC score was a 10 or a 19? The net gain was 7 points for both races!
Regatta Model — DNC Entrants + 1; with 23 entrants = [24]
Point 1. => A Fast boat carrying 4 DNCs — can finish no better than 13th, despite averaging 2nd in every race it sails.
Point 2. => Medium, Slow and Very Slow boats carrying relatively few DNCs occupy 8 of the top 12 places. The seasonal result therefore becomes heavily influenced by participation. Note that the Fast and Medium scores are idealist (season average of 2 and 4), so they will be unlikely to feature with worse scores, so the Slow and Mediums will move up the ladder.
JB-Best Option — DNC fixed at 8 + 4 = 12 --The outcome changes significantly.
Point 1. => The top nine places are occupied by Fast and Medium boats carrying between zero and three DNCs over the season (not days)
Point 2. => A Fast boat carrying four DNCs can still place well, but this is an extreme example because it must average 2nd in every race it sails.
Point 3. => Slow and Very Slow boats do not appear until around 8th/9th place unless their actual race performance improves above an average of 6 & 8 respectively.
Point 4. => Participation still has an important influence, but sailors carrying two or three additional DNCs can remain competitive if their sailing results are outstanding.
There are two 'levers' the OA/RC can use to encourage participation in a long series:
Tweaking these levers only works within a margin around what the fleet wants to do in any case.
I think the dominant driver is number of discards. I would suggest that one discard every 5 or 6 races is pretty reasonable.
In a long series of 24 races, with an expected race participation rate of 15 out of 34 entrants I would suggest that:
At my club we run a Winter and a Summer Series, each of about 25 races.
We also encourage Casual Entries, race by race as an alternative to Series Entries: Casual Entries are eligible for race prizes but, obviously not for Series Pointscores.
Using this structure, we've never seen any need to depart from the RRS A5.3 scoring.
If you are punishing people with too high a DNC score, then the best solution is to let them discard more DNCs. Are you rewarding sailing ability or just the guy who has nothing better to do on a Sunday morning meanwhile the guy who works 1 Sunday in 4 never stands a chance.
I have to say I've never really been a fan of "X races to qualify" because I'd be far more tempted to just make the discards "number of races - X".
I suspect there are relatively few clubs where the racing is so amazing that sailors are desperately vying for the prize of their series cup.
I think there is definitely merit in not scoring DNS and DNF the same as DNC - credit for trying. That said I hate DNS as a Race Officer ... How on earth do you think I know I captured very sail number that was somewhere close to the start.
In the simulation discards are a phase shift, we normally have 20-25% discards and provide DUT averages for boats away representing the club at major regattas. I agree its is a balance and our approach is to be explicit as possible in setting rules which are always and compromise. Thanks again for the feedback. Cheers, Have Fun!
The 'problem' is that John has 'too many entrants that don't race in nearly half the races'.
Maybe this could be better stated as an 'opportunity': John has a lot of loyal club members who are entering and paying for a whole long series when they know they won't be able to sail in many of those races'.
Based on John's figures: 30 boats entered, only 15 race in each race, and assuming that the 15/30 (50%) ratio extends to the number of races raced by a typical entrant: DNC of Entrants + 1 is obviously too severe unless you allow a very large number of drops, say 15 drops. There would be nothing wrong with that, except that it would aggravate whatever number of sailors who compete every week.
Glancing at John's analysis, a DNC based on Starters + (lets say 15/2: half the number of average no shows) would be an improvement, and would probably not affect the outcome for the top half of the fleet.
The DNC points and number of drops are tinkering at the margin. I think the problem/opportunity lies in the series structure.
The causes seem to be that there are some members (as Calum points out) who, for whatever reason can't or don't want to race every week:
Maybe you could survey your members and find out if there is some common pattern that you can play into.
Meanwhile, what you have is a 'demand' for 15 races a season, and you are 'supplying' 30. Maybe you could try:
These are pointscore structure changes: with a little thought they can be readily implemented within your current schedule of racing without too much trouble.
It would be up to the club which series they gave the most prestige to and called the Championship series (I would think that would be the long series).
Scaring up funds for an increased number of smaller prizes should be possible: presumably you will get some increased revenue from increased participation, and if you can find some enthusiasts for some particular structure you can lean on them stump up for some prizes for their particular preferred style.
Our annual program includes a Pointscore Series (Pursuit format; scratch -> biased towards slower boats) run every fortnight ( 15 races per season), Championship (Yardsticks; 2 races each day; 14 per season) and Sprints (Yardstick, 3-5 races per day; 24 say races per season) => run in turn every other week. (so C-P-S-P each month).
We'll be running our annual October Regatta (6 Divisions) , Hobie States, Spiral Nationals + the International Canoe World Titles this year so we'll be busy, and having lots of fun and enjoyable times out on the Bay!
As Race Secretary I want to apply a common entrant list and a common set of rules for our club races. (KISS). We are transitioning from a Cox-Sprague system to low-point (Sailres) next season. We have a meeting next week to decide on the rules.
After much research and simulations and yours, and others kind feedback, my preferred approach is DNC= Starters+4. I thinks the committee could settle on DNC = [12] which is starters + 4 for our average fleet size of 8-10. There is a group who want to keep the regatta approach of Entrants + 1.
We'll see who 'wins' the debate. Interesting Times (pun intended)!
Cheers and Thanks again for all the great feedback.
PS many clubs face similar issues and so it is worth discussing it here.