See, this is why I think there should be an exact distance measured for the course and it should be easy now that we all have hand-held GPS available.

If every "NA's" course were a measured mile (or 1.5, or what ever, but all exactly the same) from A to C, you could easily make a valid comarison from boat type to boat type, given the exact wind speed and the time it takes each boat type to get from C to A and A to C, use that as some type of a rating system, voila, you have a better system, and you don't even have to be racing open class to do it. Just measure the distance and time at each NA's, where the best skippers are sailing their own boats. The Alter Cup is a bit skewed because if the "team" isn't right for the boat (too heavy, too light, etc), or new to that type of boat, or whatever, their times will be signifigantly slower than when the same team sails their own boat.