We race every week under SCHRS with Nacra 20's, F18, F16 and A-Cat. There hasn't been much whining at the bar lately. None as I recall, even when the splits were under 5 seconds. The team that sailed best that week usually won. It is very difficult to argue with a formula.
Of course you would since the F18 owes other boats less time under SCHRS. I could find a lot of ways to argue with a formula that tries to cover something so dynamic as boat potential. Have you seen the number of variables that go into the formula? Those guys have put an incredible amount of brain power into it but who says it's any more accurate than our current Portsmouth numbers? How do you prove it? The fact that nobody complains is hardly proof of anything other than the fact people accept handicap racing for what it is.
Reference SCHRS
rules Calling me biased is pretty unfair. Any given week we'll be racing on a Nacra 20 or F16, if we can't get the F18 mast up in time for a midweek race. Besides, we were racing under 2012 SCHRS tables which have the F-18 and the A-Cat as equals. Any given week we'd win or they'd win, depending on how much upwind vs. downwind work was involved and the wind strength. This was for a 2008 Nacra Infusion w/o long boards and older generation A's without curved boards or t-foil rudders.
That goes for the other classes. The newest F16 designs are equal in performance to the F18's, which isn't surprising since that was the design intent! I will say they are a tiny tiny bit faster in light air, but regardless of conditions the better sailed boat wins and the corrected time delta is on the order of seconds for a 1 hour course.
We ran the numbers both ways before switching. Maybe there was one boat that swapped positions with another using SCHRS vs. Portsmouth after an entire season of racing. The delta just isn't there and SCHRS is fully transparent, plus does a better job of handling one-off's like modified ARC22's.
