PHRF is a handicapping system that uses the perceived speed potential of a yacht as the basis for a handicap. This handicap is used to determine a winner when different types of sail boat to race against each other, much like a golf handicap for a group of different skilled golfers.
In essence when sailing in a PHRF race your are actually racing against the clock. In order to know if you're winning during a race you have to know everyone else's PHRF rating and then measure the time difference between the sail boats at a known distance from the start line - not an easy task.
All too often sailors have to wait at the Yacht Club until the Race Committee publishes the results in order to find out who won.
PHRFulator, a PHRF Calculator, allows you to build a table of sail boats with different ratings and calculate the time between them at various distances from the start line.
- Simply click on the + button on the bottom left to create a new sail boat
- Enter the information for the sail boat. It must have a name and/or a sail number as well as numeric PHRF rating (can be +ve or -ve)
- Click add, or press ENTER, and the sail boat will be inserted into the table sorted by rating
- The most recent sail boat created is always the selected boat.
- Simply click on a sail boat to select it and the waypoint times will be updated for that sail boat.
- The selected sail boat highlighted in blue is used to calculate
- how far in front a competitor should be (a negative time, shown in red)
- how far behind a competitor should be (a positive time, shown in green)
- based on the distance specified by a waypoint, e.g. 10.0 nautical miles
- Click on the current distance the column header.
- Enter a new distance and hit ENTER.
- The times for all the sail boats at that waypoint will be updated based on the new distance and the selected sail boat highlighted in blue.
- If no sail boat is selected simply click on a sail boat in the table to recalculate the times based on that sail boat.
- Click on black + at the top right, next to the last waypoint.
- To change the waypoint distance click on the new waypoint column header.
- Enter a new distance and hit ENTER.
- The times for all the sail boats at that waypoint will be updated based on the new distance and the selected sail boat highlighted in blue.
- If no sail boat is selected simply click on a sail in the table to recalculate the times based on that sail boat.