Race15 Results

Now that the results for Race15 have come out, it seems that maybe the Sheer Force crew should have attended the protest meeting! If Chloe III did in fact sail the wrong course, as one of the protestors is thought to have claimed, then she wasn't penalised for it. She has taken1st place on corrected times in the race, and accordingly (with our 9th placing) has passed us in both pointscores to take 3rd place (main pointscore) and 1st place (lite pointscore). Spearhead came 4th and Symbiosis came 5th and were able to maintain their 1st and 2nd positions in the main pointscore.

The results show that 6 yachts withdrew from the race, suggesting that they sailed to the longer, regular course Lady Bay mark, and, admitting that, withdrew to avoid disqualification.

I use the statistic elapsed time difference from fleet average to judge the performance of yachts from race to race. It's not perfect, but it is a good guide. The graph shows the passage of this statistic through the series for Sheer Force as well as Chloe III and Spearhead. It shows that Sheer Force had a "typical" Race15, but that Spearhead and particularly Chloe III recorded exceptionally good times. Chloe III has indeed been improving all season, but can she really have improved about 12 minutes in the last race??? These statistics are calculated before the withdrawals are removed from the results, so it cannot be said that they are skewed by the withdrawals. In terms of the finishing order, Chloe III and Summersalt surprised the handicapper greatly by crossing the line 5 and 4 places respectively better than the time correction factors would predict.

These are the only facts available to us, but if it was a horserace, swabs would be taken.

The table below shows only the qualified finishers, sorted as usual by elapsed time.

Results Race15	Elapsed	Outright	Handicap	Diff fm	Mins	Rel to
	Time	Place	Predict	Fleet	behind	Sheer
			Place	Average	winner	Force
SCARLETT O'HARA	0:58:04	1	4	-7.6	0:00:00	0:12:10
SUMMERSALT	0:58:17	2	6	-7.4	0:00:13	0:11:57
SPEARHEAD	0:58:19	3	2	-7.4	0:00:15	0:11:55
TOCCATA	0:58:24	4	1	-7.3	0:00:20	0:11:50
CHLOE III	0:59:37	5	10	-6.1	0:01:33	0:10:37
SYMBIOSIS	1:01:07	6	5	-4.6	0:03:03	0:09:07
AKELA	1:01:56	7	3	-3.8	0:03:52	0:08:18
FARR LAP	1:08:42	8	9	3.0	0:10:38	0:01:32
CHANCELLOR	1:09:56	9	7	4.2	0:11:52	0:00:18
SALONA	1:09:58	10	8	4.3	0:11:54	0:00:16
SHEER FORCE	1:10:14	11	11	4.5	0:12:10	0:00:00
ANTHANTA VI	1:13:00	12	12	7.3	0:14:56	0:02:46
AMON RA	1:13:47	13	13	8.1	0:15:43	0:03:33
	Corrected	Corrected
	Time	Position
SCARLETT O'HARA	0:58:55	3
SUMMERSALT	0:57:44	2
SPEARHEAD	1:00:33	4
TOCCATA	1:01:43	6
CHLOE III	0:57:00	1
SYMBIOSIS	1:00:44	5
AKELA	1:03:34	7
FARR LAP	1:07:04	10
CHANCELLOR	1:09:12	13
SALONA	1:08:30	11
SHEER FORCE	1:06:19	9
ANTHANTA VI	1:08:49	12
AMON RA	1:06:12	8

Sheer Force crossed the line in 11th place out of 13, some 12 minutes behind Scarlett O'Hara which got the gun. (Panther, a withdrawal, was akmost 3 minutes ahead of Scarlett.) Our 11th place was exactly as predicted by the handicap. The handicapper's score in Race15 depends on weather its calculated before or after the withdrawals. It was a lousy minus 19%. counting all yachts, but the score improves to plus 22% if the withdrawals are excluded.