Bandit Regatta – Jan 17th 2022

From the left (in boats): Emileigh and Jools (Bandit IF), Juicy (Bandit 22 LTE), Sirius (Bandit IF), Rugger and Rosa (Bandit 22 LTE), Max and Wyndi (Bandit IF), Jackson (Bandit IF), Aymalie (Bandit IF), Moon (Bandit IF), Sea (Bandit 22 LTE), Alex (Bandit IF), and Zimtzicke (Bandit 22 LTE).
On the race committee boat: Cryptic. On the dock: Daenerys, Caethes, and Julia. On the pier: Asher, and Anne.

Calm seas, with another nice fleet turnout, highlighted this weeks North Sea Bandit Regatta. The North Sea regions were well behaved for most with two DNFs (Did Not Finish) recorded on the day. The first DNF was attributed to a skipper crashing while crossing over region corners. The remaining DNF occurred during the second race as a skipper got stripped from their boat mere meters from the finish. The crowds that gathered on the beach of the island in the Ziziphus region, as well as on the Poseidon Centre Spectator Pier and small race dock in the Eden Jakana region, cheered on an exciting display of fleet racing from this weeks skippers. This weeks fleet, sailing on North Sea Olympic Course (Short) and a two lap affair on the North Sea Short Loop course, was made up of a majority of seven Bandit IFs, five sailing single-handed and two sailing with crew respectively. Four Bandit 22 LTEs rounded out this weeks Bandit fleet.

Today also saw the completion of the North Sea Standard Yearly Adjustment. All handicaps in today’s regatta are from the new adjustment. The North Sea Standard is now at 0:10:30, down from last years 0:10:33. This is in part due to a full year of SL™ being hosted on Amazon servers, with most of that showing in improved successful region crossings helping shave off lap times across every boat. With the publication of this adjustment, we now have handicap times for the The Mesh Shop (TMS) Amnesia (0.74), TMS Captains Launch (0.52), WildWind SC-40 (0.96), and the TMS Star Vintage has a crewed handicap (0.55) separated from it’s single-handed handicap (0.49). Another highlight from this years adjustment include the Trudeau Patchogue II being adjusted down to 0.50 from 0.56 after stale lap times from 2014 were retired from it’s table. North Sea Olympic Course (Long), the course the North Sea Standard is based on, was used 31 times in 2021, with the winning time of each race added to the data the standard is based on. From those 31 races, 300 finishing times were used to help update the handicap values of more than 36 boats in our table. For more info, as well as a link to the Google Sheet used to calculate everything, please see North Sea Handicap Table.

Race Director: Cryptic
Assistant Race Director: Daenerys

Wind: SW (225°) 8kts

Wind: SW (225°) 11kts

Note:
Did Not Finish (DNF) = number of finish +1
Did Not Start (DNS) = number of start +1

Today’s winner was Rugger (ruggeromare Resident), with Sea (filax Carter) second, and Juicy (juice651 Resident) in third place. Congratulations to all of you. Thank you to everyone who came to sail and spectate and to the SLCG for helping with race duties.

Race Notes:
Rugger (ruggeromare Resident) and Sea (filax Carter) both finished tied with 5 points. Rule A8.1 of Appendix A, Scoring, 2021 – 2024 World Sailing Racing Rules of Sailing is used to break this tie:

“If there is a series score tie between two or more boats, each boat’s race scores shall be listed in order of best to worst, and at the first point(s) where there is a difference the tie shall be broken in favour of the boat(s) with the best score(s). No excluded scores shall be used.“

Skipper	Best Finish	Next Best Finish
ruggeromare Resident	1	4
filax Carter	2	3

With the race results rearranged in best to worst finish order, per A8.1, the tie breaks in Rugger’s favor with having a first place finish over Sea’s second place finish as her best.

---

Juicy (juice651 Resident) and Zimtzicke (Nicole Myhre) both finished tied with 9 points. Rule A8.1 of Appendix A, Scoring, 2021 – 2024 World Sailing Racing Rules of Sailing is used to break this tie:

“If there is a series score tie between two or more boats, each boat’s race scores shall be listed in order of best to worst, and at the first point(s) where there is a difference the tie shall be broken in favour of the boat(s) with the best score(s). No excluded scores shall be used.“

Skipper	Best Finish	Next Best Finish
juice651 Resident	1	8
Nicole Myhre	3	6

With the race results rearranged in best to worst finish order, per A8.1, the tie breaks in Juicy’s favor with having a first place finish over Zimtzicke’s third place finish as her best.
 

2020 North Sea Standard Yearly Adjustment

From time to time, in the past, we have adjusted a boats handicap value, or several boats handicap values, but no more than what was adjusted this past Monday (see Bandit Regatta – Jan 6th 2020). With the publication of this post, we have reviewed the the entire North Sea Handicap Table. Instead of tacking this current post on to the end of a results post, were it might get lost and also make the results post entirely too long, we are posting this here, to shine more light on what was done in this adjustment. This type of adjustment will be now done yearly, during the first week of January.

During the course of the 2019 sailing season in The North Sea, there were 25 races held on North Sea Olympic Course (Long), the course used as the basis for the North Sea Standard¹. The winners of those races were added to the table used to generate the standard. Since it’s inception in 2014, the North Sea Standard stood at 00:10:42. With the addition of the times from the 2019 race season, the time has now gone down, for the first time, to 00:10:40. The entirety of the handicap table was adjusted to reflect this change. We also added all the times for each boat that participated in those races to further adjust and update their handicaps. Some boats handicaps saw a single point drop from their previous handicap value, others saw no drop due to its value still falling within the bounds of the updated standard, and some boats saw an increase due to faster sailing times from racers increasing the value.

Several highlights:

---

The handicaps for the The Mesh Shop (TMS) Flying Shadow, solo and crewed, were entirely refactored using only times from 2019. All previous times were considered tainted or stale due to previous versions of the boat having a flaw that allowed a percentage speed gain across all polars when exploited. V2.0 of the boat does not contain this flaw. The Flying Shadow X V2.0 is the version currently allowed in North Sea races.

Boat	Old Value	New Value
TMS Flying Shadow	0.96	0.99
Flying Shadow Crew	1.13	1.16

---

In Monday’s Bandit Regatta results post, we noted the updates to some of the Bandit boats. Specifically, the Bandit IF saw a new separate handicap created for crewed IFs. 74 race times were added to the Bandit IFs handicap tab, which helped in creating the new handicap.

Boat	Old Value	New Value
Bandit IF	0.58	0.57
Bandit IF Crewed	N/A	0.59

---

The TMS Star Class had its handicap refactored off of the Backwater Bay Standard and onto the North Sea Standard, with its new value sitting at 0.64. Plus, its sibling boat, the recently released TMS Star Class – Vintage, was introduced to the table with a handicap time of 0.50.

Some more highlights, in no particular order:

Boat	Old Value	New Value
Nacra 17	1.01	1.04
Quest M-24	0.94	0.92
One Design 65	1.03	1.01
Volvo Open 70	1.00	1.01
Wildwind OP-60	1.05	1.05 (no change)
Wildwind AC-45	1.22	1.21
Widlwind AC-62	1.64	1.61

---

As always, we will continue to look at and evaluate the values on the table over the course of the year as new data is generated from races. Please see North Sea Handicap Table for more (click on the tabs along the bottom of the sheet to see individual boat data).

¹ The North Sea Standard is the average sailing time of all race winners on North Sea Olympic Course (Long) racing with a 225° (SW) 18 knot wind. This is the time that all handicaps on the North Sea Handicap Table are weighted against.