Handicap starts and pursuit races are not new in sailing. The basic concept is that each yacht then starts at a time pre-determined using their handicap and an estimated race duration. The aim is to have everyone crossing the line at the same time with the first boat across the line, the winner. The only catch is where the estimated race duration is different to the actual time taken then the whole event falls apart with the fleet still not together or the faster boats overtaking the slower ones to early in the race.
A trend that has been seen, particularily with the Laurieton events are slower yachts departing early to get home to Port Macquarie at a reasonable time. This has promped our handicapper to come up with a proposal to adopt handicap starts but still have yachts sumbit a time for their race duration and calculate the results in the same way as currently. Our handicapper has kindly put together a spreasheet that I have shared in Google Sheets and attached the excel version.
The race committee will be asked to consider the proposal at the next race committee meeting.