Mark,

it 's clearly not a PHRF but of course the calculating formula is not objective, even if it is applied in every boat as you said. Nobody really knows if the daggerboard length is truly responsible(and how much) in the overall performance of a boat. It is a formula made to produce a pre-determined result and help some boats when will not help others. If the best sailors were in other boat categories, maybe the French would agree that F18's are not faster.

However, the SCHRS system is a "necessary bad" as we say in Greece. Unfortunately here there are very few cats. In our races, which are of course only club races, we have only 2 F18's(tigers and not new F18's), 1 tornado, 1 A class, 1 F18 HT, 6 hurricanes, and 2 hobie 16's, so it is obvious that we can only have mixed races ans use the SCHRS. The truth is that all participants of our race agreed not to follow the SCHRS new handicaps but go with the old ones for this year until seeing what the SCHRS decide for next year, recognizing that the new ratings will "hurt" our competition.For example we see that tigers and hurricanes have very similar performance in the water, but now the handicap difference is big. Or how is possible an F18 to be faster than an F18 HT(higher mast, lighter etc..)

In our occasion, the new handicap will discourage new entering sailors to buy an F18 for our races. They most probably go for an old and cheap hurricane...On my opinion these new decisions are a hit for the F18's in countries/regions with few boats.

Christos