I sail in handicap fleets. Usually single handed.
My boat is a newish one from Butler boats - generally speaking sailed with main & small genoa - sailing area is a small inland water.
At open meetings I quote the published RYA figure 1355.
At my local club this figure appears to give a significant advantage. Usual opponants Lasers, Solos and Enterprises.

I believe the figure used before for single handers was 1343.
At my club we are considering 1340 as possibly being appropriate.
Any thoughts

OK Graham,

There are a few things you have to understand about PYs, and especially the Heron PY, if we get them out of the way then hopefully it helps open up the debate.

Firstly the RYA encourage clubs to amend PYs locally to suit local conditions... so what your club proposes may be correct.

OK next is the origins of the 1363 and 1343 PYs that were in use for a while. For some time the RYA had allocated 1363 to the Heron (crewed), but never a single handed PY. In view that a heron and a mirror are fairly similar the HDCA proposed that the same difference between crewed and single-handed should be considered, so dropping the Heron handicap by 20. No science just 'common sense'.

Then 3 years ago the RYA issued 1355 for SINGLE HANDED herons but no crewed number. Does that mean a crewed heron is 1375? This year they've updated that to 1350 so in 2 years of data the heron has speeded up (or the comparators slowed down.)

Interestingly that data is actually for Heron, singlehanded no spinny. In theory we could have 4 PYs single/crewed, spinny/no spinny. And thats before we debate the jib/genoa size.

So should your club reduce your handicap? Well the first thing to consider is are you sailing better than your competitors? I raced a laser the other week and they beat me on handicap, does that mean the handicap doesn't work for me? Or does it really mean a laser is a poor comparator? I'd suggest it is - lasers seem to spend half their time upside down which must be rather a slow way to sail. If they are competing against other lasers who are also upside down that makes no difference, but the stability of the heron means you tend to point the right way up. However if you raced against the top laser sailors in the country they'd be the right way up... so is it that your number should reduce or their number should increase?

The ents are probably the fairest comparator boat of your trio, being of similar basic design concept, 2 sails, originally chined wooden hull.

Going back to the potential different handicaps for single and crewed - I'd love to know if it really makes a difference being crewed / single handed. OK being single handed is lighter so you go faster, but in stronger winds that means you fall over easier. What's more, you have two sails to deal with and steer and tweak rig settings etc instead of letting your crew do the work for you. I've certainly sailed at opens where no handicapping for crewed / single handed has taken place and not felt that there was anything to do with weight being the issue of who won. (Look at Yeadon results from this year: I was 6th - single handed on windless day, The winner was crewed [2 adults]) that was places on the ground irrelevant of handicapping...

It'd be worth running 1350 through the results form the last few events to see where you come and if it has an impact after-all its the official number. Then to avoid being harsh on yourself I'd drop to 1343 (the old s/h number.)

I usually compare us to Mirrors. (Who also regularly beat me round the circuit).

This years handicaps for them are:

Mirror - Crewed (gunter rigged) - Spinakker - 1386
Mirror - Single Handed (gunter rigged) - Spinakker - 1365
Mirror - Single Handed (gunter rigged) - No Spinny - 1372

On that basis crew slows the mirror down by about 1.52%, and their spinny (smaller than a heron one) adds about 0.5%, although that might account for the difficulty flying 3 sails with 2 hands!!

On that basis you'd expect a single handed heron with a PY of 1350 to be equal to a crewed but otherwise equal heron with a PY of ~ 1371 - so pretty much equal with a no spinny Mirror (SH) and maybe even slightly slower than a single handed Spinny with a Spinny.. that'd fit my experience...!

The big problem remains a lack of data... do you know if your club submits returns to the RYA (one of only 3% of clubs which do).

My club has a separate mirror fleet but the handicappers start on the same gun so we get a fairly good feel for being pretty closely matched to the mirror fleet. But we are big open water (inland) not small inland water like yourself...

Finally how did they arrive at 1340? Did someone do some maths? or did someone just suggest taking 15 off?