In a ‘normal’ race all the boats start at the same time and finish at different times; you then apply a handicap to the elapsed time to arrive at the corrected time and a race finish order for the boats.
A pursuit races works the other way; the finish time for the race is fixed, and the boats start at different times according to their handicap. At the race finish time, it is the order of the boats on the water that decides the finish positions. In a perfect world with a perfect handicap system and all competitors having the same ability, all the boats would be side-by-side on the water at the race finish time.
Pursuit races provide some good boat-on-boat action and the occasional ‘blocking’ manoeuvre.
We use a standard Dart 18 as the reference boat and have pre-calculated start offsets for 60, 90 and 120 minute pursuit races for all the boats and configurations commonly sailed by our members.
