First, the USA needs some help with it's handicap system. It has had one single person (Darline) as the brain and brawn behind the system and she has done an absolutely astounding job keeping up with it...and I mean that. However, it's too much for one person.

Before I get into nitty gritty, I want to establish a couple of basics:

Handicap systems are imperfect by nature. I don't prefer to race under any handicap system...but when I do, I want it to be as accurate as possible.

I believe that both performance based and measurement based systems have flaws. I believe that both have unique strengths.

On the subject of Wouter and NMBR; Wouter had put a lot of energy in sketching out that system and I was starting to help briefly because I felt there was a need for improvement. I don't think Wouter will disagree that he can be passionately opinionated at times. It's probably safe to say that I suffer from the same character flaw from time to time...it didn't work out so well in that case....however, Wouter does have some interesting ideas and calculations about how to put a measurement system together.

Performance based systems (like Portsmouth) have the potential to be more accurate that measurement based systems but they pay the price of a weakness when applying a rating to new platforms, changes in platforms, or with "dead boat society" classes that typically race with boats in poor condition and some lesser practiced sailors. Reporting of regatta results is happening significantly less which is not helping with the current accuracy of the system.

Measurement based systems, on the other hand, handle new platforms and modifications to platforms quite well. They also don't rely on reporting of results (though I'm guessing they probably do back-analyze themselves from results) However, they suffer in the arena of being designed around and generally being less precise on potentials. I had previously mentioned that I felt the Texel formula was complex and Wouter has recently shown some examples where it is relatively straightforward...so I digress on that point.

I think the ideal system is a marriage of the two. Use a measurement system to establish new ratings, modification factors, and a minimum deviation to prevent positive rating creep. Use performance data to maintain and refine the numbers of boats. You leverage the strengths of each to cancel the weaknesses of the other.

As for the reporting thing, Colin, the creator of Sailwave, has already include FTP functionality for the UK yardstick in the software and is agreeable to the notion of doing the same for the US. Basically, you score your regatta in Sailwave and select "submit results to US Sailing" from a drop down menu. As long as you have an active internet connection, boom...they're submitted.