The lower the number the faster the boat.

The SCHRS has developed into quite a meaningful handicap method for Cats, it has got a lot better over recent years and already has a foil input for the lies of the A's. It does not quite yet handle weight correctly in my opinion but it has got better.

Where it does fail and fail badly is the conversion to PY numbers, we regularly sail in mixed fleets and I can't think of a Cat handicap winner in the entire time I have been racing at our club.

The RYA and Sailwave have combined to try and get the PY handicaps more reliable with automatic downloading of results and suggested club PY numbers. With very few clubs running mixed cat and dingy races, there simply is not enough data to really establish meaningful results and as the PY smoothing software will only make small ammendments each year, it will correct itself but may take more than a few years. Most clubs in the UK seem to use the SCHRS PY conversion.

In summary the SCHRS and Texel are good to getting very good, the PY is getting better with its automated downloads of data ( bigger pool of boats in bigger number of races ) somewhere in about 10 years time they should finally converge.