I'm sure there's one in every crowd... who doesn't sail proper course, or has modifications that are not disclosed, or whatever just to somehow get line honors or corrected wins in "fun" races.

I think they eventually get "found out" and the true fun racers either make this offender's life difficult by disclosing his/her tactics, or just don't consider that person part of the fun race.

The "fun" races that seemed to be the most fun for me were at my local boatyard. An arbitrary course was picked from existing marks depending on conditions, and it was a reverse handicap start based on GPS clocks or whenever the slowest boat started (start time was supposed to be 17:00 for the slow boat. The rest of us calculated our start time based on our ratings). Of course, our N20 was the last boat to start along with an F-24 somewhere around 15 minutes after the flying scott started.

It wasn't windward/leeward, either. Some days it was a rectangle, some days a triangle, and some days the course was more like a drunken sailor's stagger to the nudie bar.

The starting gate was full of boats all figuring "I'm xx seconds behind you, right?", and there were always a few boats that ended up OCS, but with no PRO you couldn't really hit them.

I think the key to the success of that series was that there were at least two or three boats in various sub-groups that all competed against themselves, regardless of which other groups overtook them during the course of the "race".

The finish was usually pretty neat, as most of the groups (unless there was a weather change) were pretty close to finishing at the same time. Made for easy logistics at the dinner table, too. Since there were no awards, it was an easy party, too, with no calculating this or that. Everyone knew who the "cheater" was but for the most part we were using this series to get on the water and practice.

The other thing that I find interesting in retrospect? There were a lot more female and youth sailors doing those. Maybe it was because it was a "backyard" series that didn't involve travel or logistics (just show up), but I think it was more because with no awards there was less pressure, and less yelling by snot captains with inflated egos (like me).