This post is just a quick update and reminder about Hotlaps. 
Hotlaps 2013 is a format that lets sailors build sailing skills and have fun by doing solo practice runs and sharing the scores online. The database allows skippers to compare their lap times with others; they can also contrast the relative performance of different boats sailing the same ‘trial lap’ conditions.
At the moment, there are six different raceline locations, and each has its own Hotlaps course: PLUMGUT, BREADNUT, KNAPTRACKICON, LINKOUS, SULU, and HEPURN.
Sailing a Hotlap takes only ten minutes, and you can do it any time you want, in any boat. Just go to one of the racelines and click on the ‘Hotlaps 2013′ poster above the green buoy; it will give you all the info you need.
The current round of Hotlaps began less than four weeks ago, and yesterday we hit a total of 200 lap entries recorded by 36 skippers in 26 different boat classes. Notohama Resident has the notable distinction of sailing lap #200 in a Flying Fizz at Plum Gut.
Speaking of which, please let me give a shout-out to all the sailors who have sailed laps so far this month. Woots! :
yala74, Armano Xaris, Jane Fossett, Andi Merryman, Lance Corrimal, LucyInTheSky Afarensis, S11D, Emelia Azemus, B117, B12, BM12, Chaos Mandelbrot, Hay Ah, Kris Hollysharp, Slanty, poko Zepp, Qyv Inshan, Justin Blade, nozomimi karu, SkyBlue Earthboy, Trapez Breen, Yuukie Onmura, Joy Acker, Wolfhard Resident, notohama Resident, Pazzo Pestana, Kentrock Mesmer, Bunnie, , VictorCR, B112, Maiko Taurog, xpaulx pain, Fearless Freenote, Rim Telling, Xi Larnia, Hannelore Ballinger.
Here’s also a new update for the Plum Gut spreadsheet that I posted ten days ago, so you can get an idea where this is going. Please click on the image below to get a readable size, and you’ll see it includes all the individual Plum Gut Hotlaps scores, color- matched to the skippers. The online spreadsheet has separate pages for each of the racelines. It makes it easy for a sailor to watch their progress over time, and to compare their skill against others running the course.
Hay Ah’s currently testing out an interactive display that should soon make this Hotlaps info much more user-friendly and available to skippers in-world, right at the raceline. (Thank You, Hay!)
- please click to enlarge
The Hotlaps data makes it possible to generate simple performance handicaps for different sailboat classes. The handicaps are normalized with respect to an index boat (the Melges-24 has a handicap of 1.00) to make the handicaps factors easy-to-use.
So far, across the six different courses a total of 26 boats have been evaluated, yielding 64 estimated handicaps. Here’s the current list for all six courses:
At the end of this month I’ll post about the conclusions we migfht be able to draw from this type of data, and I’ll also list the names of skippers who logged the fastest adjusted lap times for each boat class during January.
However, if you sail hotlaps please remember to log all your “average, good” lap times, not just your fastest runs. That way we’ll get a more realistic profile for each of the boats in the fleet.
