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Team Firefly Virtual BCN Challenge 2020 Cruise Log


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4 minutes ago, Rob-M said:

I think if this was run again then the penalties for being over should be a much bigger deduction of the days cruising total as some teams clearly planned to fit their cruising in to be under 7 hours and not go over knowing full well that losing 5 minutes in penalties was more than made up for by fitting in a few more sections. I guess it's down to the spirit in which the competition is entered in to.

 

This is a bit like the discussion on the six-hour stop on the physical challenge I think - fascinating over a beer after the fact but largely pointless.

 

Some teams keep their boat stationary for 6 continuous hours, others count every ten minutes they spend down the weed hatch or waiting for a lock as part of the six hours and shorten their overnight stop accordingly.

 

I was actually more taken with the effect that not giving bonus multipliers had on route planning - making some usual sections worth less than a third of their value in the physical challenge.

 

 

 

 

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3 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

 

Some teams keep their boat stationary for 6 continuous hours, others count every ten minutes they spend down the weed hatch or waiting for a lock as part of the six hours and shorten their overnight stop accordingly.

 

 

 

 

That's a new one on me, do teams actually get away with that?

 

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5 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

That's a new one on me, do teams actually get away with that?

 

Yes. I think it used be one stop only but that’s not the case any more although there are only three entries on the form even now, so we’ve always taken it that three is what’s allowed. There’s no rule that says that though.
 

We have turned a stoppage into a break before but only by mooring and having breakfast. We’ve also used one break for a stop at the Manor Arms a couple of times.

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7 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

That's a new one on me, do teams actually get away with that?

 

 

Nobody complained when we tied up for 6 continuous hours at Windmill End overnight last year if that's what you mean.  I will accept that we were stood on the boat with the engine running and the lines slipped 30 seconds before the 6 hours was up, but we didn't throw her into gear until the clock ticked over.

 

 

 

:icecream: 

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10 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Nobody complained when we tied up for 6 continuous hours at Windmill End overnight last year if that's what you mean.  I will accept that we were stood on the boat with the engine running and the lines slipped 30 seconds before the 6 hours was up, but we didn't throw her into gear until the clock ticked over.

 

 

 

:icecream: 

 

11 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

Yes. I think it used be one stop only but that’s not the case any more although there are only three entries on the form even now, so we’ve always taken it that three is what’s allowed. There’s no rule that says that though.
 

We have turned a stoppage into a break before but only by mooring and having breakfast. We’ve also used one break for a stop at the Manor Arms a couple of times.

The biscuits did describe weed hatch trips and waiting for locks as counting towards the rest period which is pushing it a bit far.

 

Captain Peggs example is just adapting to circumstances and isn't biscuits example what we all do ;)

 

Plus who has any waiting time at locks, never let the boat stop moving,  it's the Tawny way, including bow hauling through 6 locks whilst someone fits a new thermostat and of course whilst the weed hatch is open :)

Edited by tree monkey
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16 minutes ago, Rob-M said:

I think if this was run again then the penalties for being over should be a much bigger deduction of the days cruising total as some teams clearly planned to fit their cruising in to be under 7 hours and not go over knowing full well that losing 5 minutes in penalties was more than made up for by fitting in a few more sections. I guess it's down to the spirit in which the competition is entered in to.

While I'll admit to getting somewhat upset about this on Tuesday evening, I decided to just get over it and get on with our own run - if the rules were completely clear and people had enough time to plan then everyone aiming to win would probably have taken exactly the same route, which would've been dull.

 

To be honest, I'm not sure the restriction of having to moor exactly on junctions added much - if this was run again I'd suggest you just got X hours cruising a day full stop and you had to moor at the limit (unless for some reason you chose not to use the full time), and instead maybe there was a bigger variety of slow/fast sections and/or randomly handing out "tyre round your prop, you lose 2  hours today cutting it off" penalties to different teams (based on live streamed dice rolls or something to show it was fair) in order to spread teams out and make us choose different route options.  We've been discussing ideas like this in our team along the lines of thinking about making a BCN challenge board game, but who knows if we'll ever get around to even prototyping such a thing!

 

We also thought that a nicer way of handling the historic sections might've been not to include them on the score card at all, so each team would have to do their research to locate historic branches and work out distances and locks (and provide references with their scorecard), but obviously now too much has been written about in the forum to make running it that way interesting - and maybe this would've provided too big an advantage to teams with access to good quality historic maps.

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The trouble is we don’t know how the penalty scheme worked, only that we were told we had to make a decision between to stop early and waste time, or to carry on and get a penalty.  You make your own choice, and I may have made a bad one it that I may have got excessively penalised for the two case of being 3mins over, who knows, I certainly don’t.

 

My preference both for a virtual and a real challenge is that the scoring mechanism be open and transparent, rather than having to guess.

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14 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

Yes. I think it used be one stop only but that’s not the case any more although there are only three entries on the form even now, so we’ve always taken it that three is what’s allowed. There’s no rule that says that though.

Ah, I wondered why there were multiple entries for the stop last year - I had thought it had to be continuous but it seems the rule changed.

 

We like getting some sleep though so I can't imagine us doing anything other than a single 6 hour stop - though like @TheBiscuits we will try to cut it as fine as possible, though if I recall we were 1 minute over the 6 hours last year due to unmooring slowly!

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11 minutes ago, john6767 said:

The trouble is we don’t know how the penalty scheme worked, only that we were told we had to make a decision between to stop early and waste time, or to carry on and get a penalty.  You make your own choice, and I may have made a bad one it that I may have got excessively penalised for the two case of being 3mins over, who knows, I certainly don’t.

 

My preference both for a virtual and a real challenge is that the scoring mechanism be open and transparent, rather than having to guess.

You specifically chose not to be open and transparent. You could have asked for an opinion on here.
 

Even then you would only have had to drop Sandhills or Gilpin to compensate for the true distance that would have been used for Pelsall to Fishley had it been separated out.

 

 

ETA - or maybe not because it’s more damaging than that because you’d still have been at Pelsall overnight. Kind of proves the point. Hednesford then. More points lost.

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7 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

You specifically chose not to be open and transparent. You could have asked for an opinion on here.
 

Even then you would only have had to drop Sandhills or Gilpin to compensate for the true distance that would have been used for Pelsall to Fishley had it been separated out.

 

 

ETA - or maybe not because it’s more damaging than that because you’d still have been at Pelsall overnight. Kind of proves the point. Hednesford then. More points lost.

Not sure I am getting your point, you had a choice to stop before 7 hours or have a penalty, the fact that the way the penalty was calculated was not known made it a guess, so you just had to make a choice.  The organisers could have chosen to say you could not exceed 7 hours, but they choose not to do it that way.

 

I don’t know what was not open on my part, I tried to get a understanding on the way it worked but in the end I guessed, what’s wrong with that?

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19 minutes ago, john6767 said:

Not sure I am getting your point, you had a choice to stop before 7 hours or have a penalty, the fact that the way the penalty was calculated was not known made it a guess, so you just had to make a choice.  The organisers could have chosen to say you could not exceed 7 hours, but they choose not to do it that way.

 

I don’t know what was not open on my part, I tried to get a understanding on the way it worked but in the end I guessed, what’s wrong with that?

 

Precisely my point on the other thread John.  It was a gamble, and you took it and it (so nearly ;) ) paid off.

 

I'm going with the Montrose Toast on this one:

 

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all!

 

James Graham, 5th Earl of Montrose 1612 -1650
Royalist General during the English Civil War

 

Admittedly Montrose was hanged, beheaded and quartered before they sent bits of him to several cities, but I do like his thinking before that ...

 

 

 

 

 

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44 minutes ago, john6767 said:

Not sure I am getting your point, you had a choice to stop before 7 hours or have a penalty, the fact that the way the penalty was calculated was not known made it a guess, so you just had to make a choice.  The organisers could have chosen to say you could not exceed 7 hours, but they choose not to do it that way.

 

I don’t know what was not open on my part, I tried to get a understanding on the way it worked but in the end I guessed, what’s wrong with that?

Mostly the fact you knew you wouldn’t be competing on an equal footing with other teams. You also skip over the point about the interpretation of the distance from Pelsall to Fishley.


Remember that I did seek a ruling from the committee and got one.

 

Bottom line is you’re going to say you were creative and I’ll say you overstepped the line of fairness.
 

 

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3 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

Bottom line is you’re going to say you were creative and I’ll say you overstepped the line of fairness.

 

At which point I am going to say that you are stepping well outside the spirit of the BCNS challenge.   If you want to play spreadsheet wars go and work a trading desk in the City.  This was a bit of fun organised by BCNS and forum members to give us all something to do whilst locked down.  

 

If you really are so angry that John used 3 minutes of pretend time twice in a week, then please take my made up 1000 points and add them to your score.  I have really enjoyed this week's silliness, and even more have enjoyed the sensible entries that put so much effort into research and route planning.

 

I thought your entries were great, I thought John's entries were great.  I do think that Indigo Dreams were worthy winners, but to be honest I thought Team Styxal was the best entry.  The route didn't score as many points, they didn't do such slick video logs and I'm sure Ian won't be upset if I say that the written log wasn't up to the composition standards of some others.

 

It was one of the logs I was avidly following all week - because it was an interesting log, not a fanciful story, not a management presentation, just a fascinating look at bits of the BCN I have boated past and never noticed, or places that are now office blocks on the way past.

 

This has been the best week I have had since the lockdown.  Please don't spoil it for six imaginary minutes days ago.

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16 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

Mostly the fact you knew you wouldn’t be competing on an equal footing with other teams. You also skip over the point about the interpretation of the distance from Pelsall to Fishley.


Remember that I did seek a ruling from the committee and got one.

 

Bottom line is you’re going to say you were creative and I’ll say you overstepped the line of fairness.
 

 

What was not an equal footing, don’t get that, I have no more knowledge of how the organisers calculated this than you,
 

 I only have my interpretation for that distance, I don’t know what the organisers one was, and that is what counts for the scoring.
 

I don’t know what was even creative, you could say your ruling was rather creative.

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3 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

At which point I am going to say that you are stepping well outside the spirit of the BCNS challenge.

Fair enough.
 

But I don’t want any points. I didn’t pick a route to win. And yes I agree it will detract from worthy winners.

 

Narked - yes. But I can have a view as a competitor with no animosity. Nonetheless, Sorry John.

 

JP

 

 

3 minutes ago, john6767 said:

What was not an equal footing, don’t get that, I have no more knowledge of how the organisers calculated this than you,
 

 I only have my interpretation for that distance, I don’t know what the organisers one was, and that is what counts for the scoring.
 

I don’t know what was even creative, you could say your ruling was rather creative.

My ruling was creative. That’s what the organisers told us be when we challenged the original score sheet.

 

At the end of the day you did it your way and it did it mine and Biscuits is right. We’ll hopefully meet one day at a real Challenge.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

Fair enough.
 

But I don’t want any points. I didn’t pick a route to win. And yes I agree it will detract from worthy winners.

 

Narked - yes. But I can have a view as a competitor with no animosity. Nonetheless, Sorry John.

 

JP

 

Gracefully said, so thanks JP. 

 

I am so pleased that @cheshire~rose, @Postcode and @Capt Ahab were prepared to put so much time and effort into making my "can't get to the boat" grumpiness more fun.  Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

 

My favourite comment of the week was this one:

10 hours ago, Indigo Dreamers said:

A friend of mine who lives in Walsall posted a video of the curly wyrley full of tadpoles and I thought "funny, we didn't see any when we went round there yesterday" - except we hadnt been round there, only in our minds! Such is the power of the imagination. ?

 

... because this sums up the week better than anything.  I want to thank all the competitors for their efforts and I hope we can all meet in the real beer tent next year.

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1 hour ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Gracefully said, so thanks JP. 

 

I am so pleased that @cheshire~rose, @Postcode and @Capt Ahab were prepared to put so much time and effort into making my "can't get to the boat" grumpiness more fun.  Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

 

My favourite comment of the week was this one:

 

... because this sums up the week better than anything.  I want to thank all the competitors for their efforts and I hope we can all meet in the real beer tent next year.

Spot on - there were long periods when I really imagined you all out there, slogging away and working round the incidents I announced from the Aldridge Field Station.

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8 minutes ago, Capt Ahab said:

Spot on - there were long periods when I really imagined you all out there, slogging away and working round the incidents I announced from the Aldridge Field Station.

There were long periods that I was so tired that I thought the same and it went on for 6 days not just 2.  I was convinced that you would be realistic and close Walsall locks, but luckily not!

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