Sailaway III keeps an overall ranking of the race results all sailors.
Every time a sailor competes in a race, points are earned. The sailor with the most points is at the top of the list.
The number of points earned in a race depends on the level of the competiton in that race, on the number of competitors and on the length of the race course.
To prevent the same sailor from always staying at the top because of points earned in the past and to give new sailors a chance at fame, the points slowly diminish and fade to zero. Only by earning new points can a sailor keep his position on the ranking list.
Not all races will give the same amount of point when you finish first. This will depend on the number of contestants and the current ranking of those contestants. The more high ranked contestants the more points to be earned. A contestant is only counted if the boat has actually started the race. Races need at least 2 contestants to be counted.
Also the length of the race matters. Long distance races will give more points than short races. A long race is a race of 2500 nautical miles or more.
The formula used:
raceLengthMultiplier = 0.1 + (0.2 * min(raceCourseLength / 2500, 1))
This will result in a multiplier between 0.1 and 0.3
First the average ranking per boat is computed. This is based on the ranking of the sailors on that boat. If there are multiple sailors, a weighed average is computed of the ranking points of the sailors x the time they spend online on that boat. And also the ranking points of the best sailor on board are counted. Even if that sailor only jumped on board for a split second. This computation is only done once when the first boat finishes.
The max points and avarage points of all boats that finished after your boat or have not finished yet or have DSQ or DNF are added up. That means that the more boats you leave behind you, the more points you get.
The formula for this is:
points = raceLengthMultiplier * (sumMaxPointsPerBoatBehindYou + sumAvgPointsPerBoatBehindYou)
There is an extra bonus for the first 3 finishers, based on the number of contestants.
1st place: pointsPlusBonus = points + 0.1 * nrOfContestants
2nd place: pointsPlusBonus = points + 0.05 * nrOfContestants
3rd place: pointsPlusBonus = points + 0.025 * nrOfContestants
all others: pointsPlusBonus = points + 0.01 * nrOfContestants
Not starting DNF will give 0 ranking points.
Disqualification DSQ will give -1 ranking points.
Leaving the race DNF will also give -1 ranking points.
The earned points are given per boat upon finishing the race. To divide these points over the crewmember, the time each crewmember has spend online on board has been registered during the race. This way each crewmember will receive a fair portion of the earned points. Of course if there was only one sailor, this sailor receives all the points.
If the competing boat was a club boat or a team boat, the points are also added to the points total of that club or team. These club points and team points are used to keep a ranking of all clubs and of all teams.
Apart from the overall sailor/club/team rankings, the system also keeps track of rankings per boat class and per boat design. The race needs to be limited to exactly one boatclass or one boat design to be included. An open race or a race for 2 or more boatdesigns is ignored, even if all boats competing were of the same design.
The points are collected per quarter to also keep a quarterly ranking, but only for all sailors, all clubs and all teams, not for individual boat classes or boat designs.
All points in the rankings slowly fade to zero. This is to prevent someone from staying at the top of the list just because a lot of points have been earned in the past. And if the points would only ever increase, it would be very hard for a new sailor to earn enough point to reach the top of the list.
The formula used is:
pointsToday = pointsYesterday * 0.98