The crew of Akele with the winning 26lb Ono
Story by Mike House |
| For the second straight tournament, I forgot to let the fish know that boats would be out there looking for them, and some of the fleet ended up roaming around, burning fuel and wondering what it was all about. Yes, the catch was pretty miserable this time around, so for scoring, I decided to try something new. The modified winner is based on the square root of the number of gallons burned divided by the hours spent on the water, with the quotient then factored into a ratio of the boat length divided by a reference poundage caught index. Using this innovative new formula we get a fuel burn index, and below is the results of the Independence day fuel burning tournament (formerly known as the Independence Day Fishing Tournament). NOTE: power and sail do not have their own divisions in this format. |
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First place went to Blue Nun with a fuel burn index of 8.61 quazalms. Although they placed third in the tournament under the old "pounds on the scale" formula with a 13.5 pound Mahimahi, we can clearly see the new system is much more exciting. In close second was Holokai with 8.49 quazalms despite their not catching any fish. Third went to Kahuna Kai who was also close with 8.36 quazalms, also without any fish on the scale. A quazalm is a measurement ratio used in referencing multiple items that ordinarily have no correlation. A fuel burn index quazalm between 7 and 8 is considered scientifically normal, or average. Sea Verse, whose 17 pound Ono that placed second under the old method, and 20/20, who did not record a fish, were in the baseline averages with 7.99 and 7.42 quazalms respectively, and with the two vessels having been the most consistent over the past couple of seasons, it does validate the results. |
| Akele, despite catching the highest poundage
and winning the tournament under the conventional format with a 26-pound Ono, placed 7th
in the fuel burn index with 6.81 quazalms. The only other boat that caught a fish in the
tournament, Chieme (9-pound Mahimahi that didn’t quite qualify), placed the lowest in
the fuel burn index with only 4.62 quazalms. Though Chieme caught fish and burned little
fuel, their time on the water for fish caught seems to have dropped them a bit. I’ve placed a copy of the fuel burn index below for those interested in the new scoring system. Of course, there won’t be any trophies or prizes for the winners as this system won’t go into effect until at least next year - the concept needs to be discussed further – but one can clearly see that using quazalms to equalize the fleet is an excellent methodology for the future of fish tournament scoring. |
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