I can tell you in the US under the PN system the A has a sweetheart rating. Mostly because the good sailors never race in the open classes. So the times never get turned in.
That each boat placing first in each class was sailed to its true potential by a perfect crew according to flawless strategy;
These two statements sum up the problem the USA has with using Portsmouth. If you can't generate a hundred races in each of the 4 wind speed categories with races of the major OD classes sailed by the top sailors in the class ... you won't be able to do anything better then more or less fair ratings.
Mike, the problem is not that OA's don't turn in data... they have no data to turn in.
Examples.
Tradewinds, 5 A cats and 12 N20's.... NO Portsmouth Data!
Area C Which has 12 N20's, 2 F18's and 40 A cats in region.... No Portsmouth Data from these boats. (only 4 boats competed)
On the Chesapeake, WRSC has 12 N20's and 15 A cats. We generated 1 regatta in 2008 of race results for Portsmouth. BUT... the top A class sailors finish top 20 nationally... the N20 sailors don't compete at nationals but usually don't finish better then mid pack historically... so the underlying Portsmouth assumption is just not valid. Result... even this data is pretty useless.
We did not have any other data comparing a 20 to an A cat around a standard course in 2008.
Toss in another new class which does not have OD nationals or much OD fleet racing and a second class which is very strong in a region but with a history of their popular single handed class rating trailing the true performance and it becomes very difficult to handicap designs with performance data.
Finally, with the advent of spinnakers... the time a boat is sailing down wind with 2x the sail area has decreased versus the time it goes upwind. Even worse the down wind speed is non linear, the spin sweat spot is in that 7 to 14 knot range. The A cat has a constant amount of Sail area. So it becomes very very difficult to rate the two against one another if the formula (SCHRS or Texel) and the race course don't match.
For Portsmouth, this fact makes data collection even more difficult. When race data are included from non traditional race courses or from non W L courses the statistical noise increases dramatically.
The A class, Hobie 14 and Hobie 17 have always been tough to rate against the sloop boats... it's much more difficult to rate them against the spin boats.
IMO, We should spend the money and get the Nacra F17 rated (in all of its configurations) so that SCHRSS and Texel have accurate data and then evaluate the rating table from a world wide perspective based on experience of the top sailors in the major classes. Decide if their is problem and then what to do about it.
