Hi Darryn

You're seeing some very different stuff on your race course to what I'm seeing!

At the last McCrae cat champs, in the overall results between Mosquitos with Spinnaker, Taipans, A-classes, F18s and Vipers, Gary on a Mosquito with a spinnaker was beaten into second by Chris Boag on a Taipan 4.9 cat rig by one point - a very close result. Apparently this was taken into account when the Mosquito with spinnaker yardstick was dropped 3 points and the Taipan 4.9 cat raised half a point - where's the logic?

Gary is quite right - sloops with spinnakers have never been able to beat cats with spinnakers except in very rare individual races. The sloops with spinnakers could be rated slower.

The reason the non spinnaker sloop has been rated faster is that only the Mannering Park, Portarlington and Rivolli Bay Nationals have been looked at - 2 out of 3 having a decent breeze and suiting the sloops.

But this is in line with the stated objective of the new yardsticks to apply in 15+ knots of breeze. Previously the yardsticks were supposed to provide a fair result on average over a range of conditions. These new yardsticks are a different type of yardstick to what we are used to.

Clubs are supposed to adjust the yardsticks themselves for light winds. Having 'optimised' the yardsticks for 15+ knots I think it would have been better if YV had also provided a set of yardsticks for light winds (like the USSailing system), instead of leaving clubs to figure it out for themselves.