Sure, but let's look at the reality of that "rule beater" situation. In most cases, the "rule beater" scenario is only a function of a poorly derived rating and not a sailor trying to work the system. There ARE cases where some sailors have put a boat together with the intent of winning a handicap race by working the rating system. I expect that if I knew all of the cases this happened that I could count the occurrences in the last decade easily on one hand - it's very rare. While this is certainly undesirable I look at this way 1) That person is spending a ridiculous amount of effort to win a handicapped race. 2) if it matters that much, he can just take all of the $ winnings.

PHRF is a completely different animal. There are a lot more boats with wildly varying configurations being managed by people who might actually win something or have a large enough investment / ego that they wish to win at all cost. The occurrence of the "rule beater" attempts is much more prevalent under PHRF and the whole thing even generates it's own politics. We are not in that situation. The significant majority of our boats are raced to a one design configuration and only a very small % of them are being modified and customized (and an even smaller percentage are being modified and customized successfully).

The other situation is where we get a new boat / configuration and there is some debate about its rating. IMHO, the rating, if not derived strictly from a parameter/measurement based system, should lean on the stiff side until proven otherwise. That has been our recent failing in that the provisional ratings have been issued as a pretty soft number making it easy for the new design to win. While the guy that owns the new shiney boat with the soft rating is smiling, he really wasn't the guy lobbying for that number (I'm giving the benefit of the doubt here).

With regards to foilers, I've said it before; it's silly to try and race handicap with a foiler against a displacement boat. The capabilities are so wildly different in varying conditions that you can't assign any reasonable number to define the capabilities between the two boats. It would be like trying to assign a number between a J22 and an F18. Trying to race those two boats against each other is silly. The J22 is fast in light air but quickly falls off as it hits hull speed at around 6.5knots. The F18 has a completely different set of capabilities in wind and water conditions. By the same token, there is no reasonable way to rate and race a non-foiler against a foiler.

Handicap racing is what it is - it's never going to be perfectly accurate. We just need a system that is reasonably accurate and has a system to update to accommodate new boat designs and have simple modification factors. IMHO, there is not enough money involved or cheating taking place to justify a national measurer system.