Significance of PHRF ratings ?

[sailortonyb Allied Mis]

Where are libraries when you need them? I guess thats why im here. Anyway, im thinking that i will end up with another boat. I am not a racer, but i dont want a slug either. Its not an issue of whether i NEED to go fast so why dont i get a racer kinda thing. I want a boat that is fun to sail, that is why i have eliminated many manufacturers. I want it for day sailing, many 1 week trips and cruising for about 4 months a year. I currently own a Catalina 30.....i think, still waiting on insurance adjuster.Im thinking of a 36 - 37 foot boat. I looked at some of the phrf ratings and i know they are handicap numbers. But What does that usually mean in the real world with normal sailing conditions. For instance, what does a rating of 210 mean compared to 160 other than 50 seconds a mile ? What info can i draw from this as to the performance of a boat? All of the boats have approx the same hull speed. If i used bigger sails, will this offset the idea of ratings, since i wont be racing? What i think im asking is.....can a heavier boat say like an Allied 36 Ketch sail as fast as a lighter 36 Catalina with the proper sails in relative light air conditions?H E L P.

 

[Tim R.]

Here's what I know about ratings

It has to do with how a boat sails on all points of sail. Some point better and some run better or reach better. Some boats need more wind to go fast than others. With little wind my Pearson 28 will sail past some heavy blue water boats that have a higher theoretical hull speed. But in high winds it gets much closer. A deep keel boat will generally point better then a keel/cb boat or wing keel boat. Adjustable backstays will also make a boat point better if you are willing to adjust it while cruising.Look for a boat that has a long water length, a deep keel and a solid hull. Beam also has a lot to do with the speed. The PHRF really is a good indicator for a boats performance. I would think that a boat with a lower relative PHRF in relation to it's LWL would be a higher performance boat. For example: A boat with a PHRF of 150 and a LWL of 29' is a better overall performance boat than a boat with a PHRF of 150 and a LWL of 32.That's my theory.P.S. I belive a standard base PHRF handicap is based on using a chute downwind which many cruisers do not use.Tim R.

 

[Alan]

Good Questions....but you've made a few incorrect assumptions. "All of the boats have approx the same hull speed"...not nearly true. Boats vary widely in hull speeds. Typically the larger the boat the higher the hull speed, although some small planing hulls like the Melges 24 can hit speeds over 20kts." what does a rating of 210 mean compared to 160 other than 50 seconds a mile ? "...well for one thing, at 210, it couldn't get out of its own way. If you're looking for sailing pleasure then look for lower phrf ratings. Especially in light air, a lower rating boat will move out and be much more sailor friendly compared to a big ole heavy boat that has a hard time moving in anything less than 15kts. ".can a heavier boat say like an Allied 36 Ketch sail as fast as a lighter 36 Catalina with the proper sails in relative light air conditions?" simple answer, NO. Take a look at a Wyliecat 39. Here's a boat with easy sail handling, cruiser friendly, and blistering speed even in light air. BTW it rates 72.

 

[Dan Johnson]

Handicap

Tony, think of the PRHF like a golf handicap, only related to time over distance. Consider it a metric for potential performance.We have boats in our racing fleet with ratings from the low double digits to the 230's to 240's. On any given race day, some boats exceed their ratings and others seem like floating bricks. Some are great upwind while others just fly down wind.New sails, clean bottom, a focused crew, the right wind range, a favorable race course to wind angle, great trimming, good timing at the start, a reasonably sized beer cooler, and a bit of luck all help determine how a boat will perform in a race compared to its rating.Don't expect a boat with a low rating to sail to that rating without all the above in place. From observing the fleet, good boats do tend to live up to their rating expectations, but some don't make very good cruisers or all-around boats. It's all in your intended use.Check out the fleet racing results in a magazine like SpinSheet out of Annapolis. By checking on how ones you're interested in perform will give you an idea of what to expect in everyday use as well.Don't expect any heavy boat to perform well in light air. It's a mass/energy conversion thing. But you don't want to be in a lightweight boat when the winds come up and the water gets lumpy either. Do extensive research on the dock, around marinas, anywhere you can collect anecdotal evidence that would support the choice of boat you're interested in. One thing I found about race boats is that you sometimes really do need a crew to man all the trimming locations when they're not set up for single handing.S/V Intrepid H34 #113

 

[David W]

A slouch may be a bit strong

My brothers boat, an Ericson 26 is rated at 257 with flying sails. It is, by no means, a slouch. He has beat other boats with lower ratings on uncorrected time in distance races. Our boat, a Crown 34 is rated at 134. Are we faster? Yes. Twice as fast? Nope. But we are faster. But we can get creamed by boats with higher ratings as well.Tim makes a good point relative to LWL. Comparing two boats of similiar LWL, that with the lower PHRF will be the better all round sailing boat. But it may not be better in a blow.

 

[Moody Buccaneer]

there are other indicaters

Two basic numbers help at bit in comparing boats.SA/D: Sail area to displacementD/L: Displacement to water line lengthYour Cat30 has a SA/D of around 15:1 for a standard rig or 17:1 for the tall rig. The tall rig does better in light air.The D/L of a C30 is about 300 depending on who's guesstimate of weight you use. Catalina used to list them at 10,500#, mine weighs 12,000#.In 1975 300 was considered moderate, now its considered heavy.Larger SA/D usually means better light air performance.Lower D/L usually means faster for a given length. Higher D/L usually gives a nicer motion at sea.Sport boats and lightweight racers are under 125 D/L and over 20 SA/DPHRF ratings are a good yardstick, but remember those are fully crewed boats. On your Cat 30 that means 1200#'s of crew on the rail. A fully crewed Cat 30 carries a 150% Genoa up to about 20 knots true wind speed. The lighter boats are more sensitive to crew weight than heavier boats. A 30-35 ft racer with only two aboard is not likely to sail anywhere near it's rating.

 

[sailortonyb Allied Mis]

THANKS A BUNCH

Now this is really educational. The choices of boats that im looking at is so varied, mainly becuase the usage will be varied. I love my Catalina 30 and said that it was my final boat, now that it may be totalled, im looking at a larger boat, BTW we live/lived aboard. Some of the choices that im thinking of are all based on price/age/size/condition. May i have the envelope please?....a-n-d the choices are Allied Princess 36 (KETCH), Catalina 36 (SLOOP), Cheoy Lee Luders 36 (Yawl), Hunter 37 (CUTTER) and an Endeavour 37 (KETCH). Given the choices, you can see my dilemma. Heck of a decision. From the pretty fast to the pretty slow. I would hate to sacrifice performance in everyday sailing for comfort on a cruise which will be mostly coastal and the Bahamas. There is normally me and wifey but last year her family took ill again and i wasnt going to put off my cruising any longer so i went alone and she met me at various ports. I made it from La. to Florida in the worst of weather this past winter, but i had a ball. The rough ride in the Catalina 30 didnt bother me much in the way of handling it by myself. I love catalina's but think a ketch or yawl is sooooooooooo cool looking. Soooooooooo traditional.

 

[Moody Buccaneer]

Give the C34 a look too

Adding a mast adds double the rigging (standing and running) and adds to sail expense. In my opinion 37 feet is about as small as a Ketch or Yawl can be and look "right".Several people I know have picked the C34 over the C36 for its cabin layout.Since you sail short handed and you know what the motion of your C30 is like, boats with D/L much lower than 240-250 will not have as kindly ride as the C30.

 

[Jon W.]

One caution.

When comparing PHRF ratings, make sure to compare apple to apples and oranges to oranges.The best reference is the PHRF base handicap booklet by USSAILING. It contains the base ratings for each class in every PHRF area. The reason this is important is because ratings differ for each area, and also for individual boats when they receive "as sailed" ratings.An actual boat's rating will have been adjusted from the base rating for non-standard sails and other items.So you can directly compare boats only by base rating in one area only. Using other areas or actual boat ratings introduces variables.By the way, that PHRF rating per waterline length is an interesting concept. I guess it means that a larger boat with the same handicap may be slow for its size, since speed usually increase with length.And a boat rating 210 is not necessarily slow. In sailing, Speed is Relative. I can't even tell the difference between 5 knots and 6 knots without a knotmeter. I doubt a boat out on a day sail doing 5 knots is having less pleasure that a boat doing 6 knots unless you’re a type "A" personality, in which case you should be a power boater

 

[George B., s/v Freya]

PHRF and Golfing

PHRF is a handicap rating based solely on the physical properties of the boat in question – it has nothing to do with the skill of the crew nor the condition of the sails. Golf handicaps would be similar only if the clubs (and not the golfer) were handicapped. The example would be a person swinging a Big Bertha would give strokes to someone using a set of Kmart specials even if that person was Tiger Woods.All other things being equal, a lower PHRF boat will out perform a higher one. Along with LOA and LWL, draft, displacement, ratio of ballast to displacement, principal rig dimensions, sail area etc, are factored into the equation. Everyone likes to complain about PHRF and it’s lack of “fairness” but no one yet has come up with a universally acceptable alternative to it. IMHO, a rating difference of up to ten seconds isn’t going to make a big difference, so pick the boat you like. But if you are looking at 30 seconds to a minute – that’s a noticeable performance difference that isn’t going to get fixed by buying new sails and sheets. Simply stated, PHRF gets smaller as the LOA/LWL increases. Lighter boats and those with a bigger ballast to displacement ratio will be lower than heavier ones with the same length. Boats with taller masts, larger sail plans and fractional rigs will be faster than mast head rigs and standard rigs. Let’s leave genoa size out of the discussion as they tend to be treated as an adjustment to the basic PHRF number. (for example, Freya had three seconds taken off her base number because my genoa is slightly oversized). Some PHRF will make an adjustment for spinnakers so that they can race against non spinnaker boats.Ketches and yawls look cool but they have two performance problems. They tend to be a heavy displacement along with a full (or skegged) keel, making them slower than a sloop of the same LOA. And their two mast set up (and that full keel again) won’t give you the same tight tacking angle that you would get with a sloop. If you’re single handing, tacking to windward all day is going to get real old, real quick in a ketch.To put things into perspective, here are the PHRF ratings for your boats (and a couple of others) from here in San Francisco. Catalina 30 – 180; C34 – 147; C36 – 141; Cheoy Lee Luders 36 – 198; Hunter 37 Cutter – 138; Endeavour 37 – 180; Crealock 34 (cutter rigged double ender) – 198. As you can see they are radically different designs with radically different performance ratings. Now for comparison, Areodyne 38 – 36; and Farr 40 – 6. You just gotta ask yourself one question – Do I want to cruise really, really fast or do I want to be really, really comfortable. Good luck in your search and hope everything works out with the insurance company on your C30.

 

[Rick D]

No PHRF Crew Factor?

I thought that PHRF adjusted handicap based on performance and that the crew... and other factors... ultimately weighed on the handicap. Am I wrong? RD

 

[jimq26]

Yes Rick - you're wrong!

PHRF doesn't consider new or old sails, new or trained crew, clean or fouled bottom, Olympic triangle course or windward / leeward course - etc etc etc.PHRF is old and out of date with reality.

 

[Jon W.]

Rating adjustments

With PHRF, at least here, there are two types of ratings. Speed potential rating (SP) is the published one, and is generally known as base rating. It’s based on a standard boat. It assumes performance by a top 1% skipper and crew in a top condition boat. This speed is base on the observed average performance over several representative races by said boat. You can always appeal a rating, but if you have a lousy crew, and a shoddy boat, you are unlikely to get an adjustment, since you are getting what you deserve. Would it be fair for a boat with a fouled bottom, and blown out sails, sailed by a skipper with no idea what they are doing, to have a rating addvantage over all the other boats in the race?We also have a performance rating (PF) that factors in the crews competence, and experience, as well as boat condition. This rating is for the use of localized groups or races, like for a youth program at a specific Yacht club.PHRF does a commendable job, or it would have been replaced long ago.P.S. I don't have any personal interest in PHRF, I just took the time to read and understand the manual.

 

[Tom Spohn]

sail calculator

Here is a site you can use to compare the characteristics of the boats you are narrowed down to:http://www.image-ination.com/sailcalc.html

 

[Moody Buccaneer]

PHRF is not a rating system

PHRF is a HANDICAP system, not a RATING system.It works extremely well for many boats, like J24's. It does not so well for single boats.Because it is a handicap system it can never go out of date, it cannot be designed to or around. It has no loopholes.The idea is to assign a handicap number that indicates relative boat speed.To prove it's validity, compare the range of finishing times in a one-design fleet to the range of corrected results for a PHRF race.If one J24 can be 15 minutes faster than another in a one design race, does that mean that all J24's should not have the same rating?If my boat has a PHRF number of 180 and the J24's number is 168, I would expect that the average J24 should be faster than my boat. If I sail as well as the J that wins by 15 minutes in a One Design race I should beat the J that lost by 15 minutes under PHRF.If ALL the J's beat me ALL the time there *might* be a problem with my PHRF "rating". If all J24's always beat all Catalina 30's then one number or the other is wrong and PHRF can change it.I don't think PHRF is perfect. It should be getting better every year. If all PHRF committees shared data and all clubs using the system provided race data, the system could be fine tuned.It can't favour one boat over another since it is not a measurement rule.The only boats that suffer under PHRF are new high performance designs. These are the boats the hot sailors race on. The rating gets established and for a time, the average guy that buys one is stuck with the hired gun handicap.I used to race under IOR (Invest or Retire) and PHRF, then it was IMS and PHRF, IOR is dead (thank God), IMS is dieing, PHRF is still going strong.I'll wager that more boats have raced for more miles under PHRF in the last 30 years than any other handicapping or rating system.Measurement rules create rule beaters, as do One Design classes. Only PHRF gives every sailor a chance to do well sailing the bout they have of the type they like.

 

[Jon W.]

Handicaps?

Then why do they assign ratings, and not handicaps? Curious.

 

[Bob]

More phrf questions

Where I race, phrf seems to work pretty well, but I know that some think it is a poor system for handicapping boats that are of differing performance levels. I've seen systems that change handicap numbers based on wind conditions for that race. I know that some clubs change the numbers for individual boats to reflect that boat's performance the previous year. And most clubs assign (+) or (-) values for equipment modifications. So my questions are:1. At what point should we stop tinkering with the base numbers?2. Is a more sophisticated system that, say, factors in wind strength on a given day, ultimately fairer to all boats?3. jimq26 says phrf is "old and out of date with reality." What system would then be better?

 

[jimq26]

AMERICAP ll would be better!!!

Check out the US Sailing website, then look up the AMERICAP ll handicap system. It's fair with no politics involved.

 

[Moody Buccaneer]

AmericapII = IMS Lite

AmericapII is a measurement system just like IMS.Measurement systems are only as good as the numeric model.Measurement systems produce boat types to fit the rule.The PHRF system fits the rule to the boats.Measurement systems try to predict performance. PHRF assigns a handicap based on performance.How accurate are numeric predictions? How well do numeric models predict the weather? (ask someone that lived in New Orleans) How well do numeric predictions do when designing a new boat? (hint: How many Volvo Ocean 70's had major break-downs in the first 48 hours?)I'll race PHRF or One-Design, the measurement geeks can have at it at the Grand Prix level.

 

[tom]

Pearson 323 versus J32

This last weekend we were sailing in Andrew's Bay off of panama city. There were a lot of boats but the one that caught my eye was a J32. My Pearson 323 has a rating of 180 as does your catalina 30. I couldn't find out what a J-32's rateing is but that boat is fast!!!! Most of the J boats have rateings near 50. I know that the Pearson 323 is a relatively slow boat. The rateings said that before I bought the boat. A friend has a Catalina 34 which is faster than my Pearson and it is also reflected in the rateing.  Look at the sail-calculator and get some other numbers to compare before buying a boat. I liked my boats relatively low capsize screening formula. Most of the catalina's are over 2 and mine is 1.75(I think) this means if I roll that I'll come back up more quickly. Assuming that you believe in CSF's As someone else said the rateing for a short boat is larger than a longer boat. So when comparing numbers be aware of the boat's length.Tom