A Message from your 2007 Fleet Scorer

Greetings fellow Milwaukee Bay Laser Fleet sailors.  For the 2007 season we will once again be using St. Peter Scorer to tally and report the nightly scores and season summary.  For those that may not be familiar, St Pete Scorer it is a widely used program geared toward scoring one design fleets.  Its cheap, easy to navigate and incorporates the 2005-2008 RRS.  With its drop down menus and cut and paste options, one can quickly and accurately score large fleets.  It does have some quirks though especially when one attempts to score a multi-night summer series with an ever increasing competitor base.  To keep this painless for me and meaningful to all of you I need your help.  Please be aware and comply with the following:

1) After you register for the season, please send me an email with your primary and alternate sail numbers.  Please do this before the first night you race.

2) Unless you specify otherwise, the first sail number you race with will be your primary sail number and you will carry that number for the remainder of the season regardless if you change sails, numbers or boats.  The scoring program assigns a unique identify to each competitor. This is their last name which is linked to their primary sail number.

3) You will only be scored if you follow the check in procedure listed in the sailing instructions which in brief includes sailing by the race committee, hailing your last name  and sail  number, and being acknowledged as having done so by the race committee. 

4) If you let someone borrow your boat for a night (which includes your unique identifier, your sail  number), you will be scored DNS for the night and your friend  will be scored under your sail number plus an alpha-numeric suffix.  i.e Dolan sail number is 176036.  He lends his boat to Garcia and Dolan stays on shore for the night.  176036 (Dolan) is scored DNS and 176036a (Garcia) is scored based on his finishing place for each race sailed.  For night two of racing, Dolan again decides to stay on shore but this time he lends his boat to Weir.   For night two of racing then 176036 (Dolan) is scored DNS, 176036a (Garcia) is scored DNS and 176036b (Weir) is scored based on his finishing place for each race sailed.

5) If you sell your boat anytime after the first night you raced,  you will carry the original sail number for the purposes of scoring for the remainder of the season.  The new owner will carry an your original sail number plus an alpha-numeric suffix.   i.e Dolan sail number is 176036.  He sells his boat to Garcia and Dolan buys a new boat with sail number 178893.  For every race thereafter 178893 (Dolan) is scored as 176036 and Garcia is scored as 176036a.

6) After each night of racing, the PRO will give the raw scores to the lead agent [Blumberg for MYC, Drake for MCSC, Goggins for SSYC] of the club that is hosting the racing that night [MYC for May and June, MCSC for July, SSYC for August].  Lead agents will then forward the results to me by email.  I will post the results on the fleet web page as well as forward them to Fleet Captain Mike Blumberg to distribute.

7) Experience has shown that the number of competitors increases over the course of the summer with many registering and then racing well after the first night of racing, May 22nd. Keep in mind that this will increase the value of DNS, DNC and DNF as the season progresses [DNS = DNC = DNF = number of registered competiors + 1].  A healthy throw-out value (33% of all races sailed) is designed to offset the ever increasing  DNS value.  To be in the medal hunt for the season championship then you will either need to 1) show up every night and sail well throwing out your less then  stellar races or 2) sail  better than everyone every time you come out and miss no more than 33% of races sailed or 3) some combination of the above. 

I hope that clarifies the St.  Pete Scoring quirks when applied to the Milwaukee Bay Laser Fleet Summer Series. If any questions give me a buzz.  Steve