Originally Posted by SurfCityRacing

To me, the best system would be one that would use fewer volunteer hours to implement. Let's face it, we don't have the enthusiastic volunteer pool that we once had. No one wants to measure boats when they could be drinking rum in the club.

Luckily for us here in Area G, most boats race in their one-design configuration.


We are only talking about championship or qualifying events. It is not the responsibility of the race organizers to supply measurers. Somebody like Krantz would have no problem I am sure getting his boat taken care of if that was the question to race in an event like this.
All systems of handicap have some flaw. The DPN relies on a lot of assumed equal competition of sailors – something we do not see across the range of boats any more. SCHRS and Texel are calculations based on physical measurements of the boats. This provides the least biased formula, but they have some very serious flaws as well. See some of the other many posts on this.

Shy of developing foils like the Moth (and then the calculation would change anyway) no slow evolution really has created too big a gap in how this system seems to work. A change such as square top sails and reverse angle bows that are all common now happened across all the newer classes at about the same rate as changes in the calculations would have occurred. We seem to bring ourselves all along. Interestingly enough then the 1 design boats like the H16 should be left out in this, but you will see almost no change in the ratings difference even given the “developmental” differences in the other classes. Even in the 1 design there are changes and a new 1970 H16 is in no way competitive with a new 2010 boat. Sails, pylons, hardware, beam and rigging changes, plus the simple evolution of 40 years of sailors learning how to make them go.

Not that I agree with handicap racing but I do feel the DPN is more bogus than some of the others given the state of our sport now.