Ruth is a marine surveyor and degree-qualified marine engineer with a particular interest in naval architecture and aero-hydrodynamics. She started sailing dinghies at school and in later years raced Lasers and RS200s before moving on to yachts. When not sailing she can sometimes be found paragliding on ridge sites in Wessex and along the Dorset coast, or flying aerobatics in her Van's RV-8 from Henstridge airfield.

Very sadly, William died in September 2019 after a two year battle with cancer. William was a software engineer with a maths / computer science degree and 25 years software experience with embedded military communications and commercial database systems. As well as VPRS, he developed passage-planning software which used logged polar data, wind and tide conditions, and available sail plans, to yield optimum points of sail for racing. Rather more at home on a board than on a yacht, he had a good appreciation of the dynamics of sailing.

Until recently we owned and sailed a Hustler 35 and occasionally raced short-handed with the Poole Yacht Racing Association (PYRA), mostly on the longer passages, and as a result have experienced some of the frustrations and problems with the existing rating systems.

Encouraged by some of our racing friends at Parkstone Yacht Club and building on an earlier research project, we designed a completely new rating system. The system uses a Velocity Prediction Programme (VPP) and is designed to work with a restricted set of input measurements. It is therefore known as VPRS (Velocity Prediction Rating System).