Jake
Your position ignores the real world!
Pick any event.... A foiling a cat shows up and wants to race handicap... If you push him into a class of one.... he won't be back (or stay).... ditto a phantom or carbon 20...
so, Choose... between a large racing fleet of cats on the line... or three tiny fleets of cats in three races.
Personally..... the old saying... WEll... There are Horses for courses.... and today.... It was the Foiler Course!
These days... racers choose one design.... there is not much oxygen for a handicap race of spin boats or sloops or flyers. ... Therefore... you are better off with one big race.... and some wise ol fart at the bar telling war stories about when the Shark was the greatest catamaran on the water. (illustrating the point that in multihulls... things change!!)
and the key point....have the OA Serve good beer!
In practical terms... just have the OA publish how the fleets will be split up..... None of the...well... lets see who shows up and then decide....
The guys putting full foiling fidgets on their boats don't care one iota about handicap. It's you guys that are getting left behind that are trying to make sense out of the situation and if I were in the same boat
(haha, see what I did there?), I would be trying to find similar displacement boats that I could continue to race among and be happy - or move onto something else. Seriously, find a guy that's hacking away at his $15,000 boat to install full foiling gear and see if you can distract him long enough so he can tell us how important that handicap number is in his game plan.
The foiler knows he is going to have an unfair advantage in most conditions and none of them are clambering for a handicap number to level the playing field. It's about the technological challenge and speed for most of these guys.
PS - before anyone gets rubbed the wrong way with my reply, I really meant all of this with a nod and a wink as if we were having a conversation while throwing back beers.
