That blame can not be assigned to the rating committees or rating systems. It is not so hard to make a measurement based rating system that covers all and even rates cardboard boxes very accurately.

The party that is making the problems are the race committees. For a while (I think in 2004) Texel had two rating numbers for each boat (setup); one for light winds and one for strong winds (trapezing), this is rather effect at taking the larger share of the inequalities, especially between say the H16 and A-cats. So we engineers and raters though we had cracked it. And what do you know ? all the racing committee simply refused to use the new system. It was too complicated they said; which is total BS of course as it was the very same system but now with two rating numbers. I think they even went as far as to agree among themselved to never use it. Loosely translated they simply don't care about any inequalities. They do care about the "perceived" hassle. Another thing was of course that they don't want to get into arguments with sailors why a certain race was marked as a "light winds" or "strong winds" race.

Of course as always the cat sailors themselved were to lazy and disorganised to mount an effective counter campaign and a year later Texel was restored to single number rating that must somehow strike an even balance between light and strong wind race. This means of course that it loose accuracy in both circumstances.

End of story.

Wouter