The guy that does one, maybe two regattas a year, is going to quit coming to the regatta if you put hurdles in front of him that he really doesn't care about. It's just not worth giving somebody a negative opinion. Throw a piece of bubble gum at a wall and give him a number. Let him race, have fun, no fuss, and see you next year. Offer to point him in the right direction if he wants to build a real SCHRS number for his boat. It's worth the risk that that one boat runs away with all the prize money....

A few years ago, we had a serious resurgence starting with Hobie 16s in our area at local regattas. We had two situations with two regattas in one year where one had poor communication at one and another suffered one sour attitude that resulted in handicap and class issues and a bunch of Hobie 16s feeling like outsiders. They evaporated and we lost all momentum from a fleet that was on the cusp of outnumbering all other boats combined on a regular basis. It was dumb and I really regret that we weren't able to fix it. Kill the hurdles and tone down the seriousness at the low level regional regattas.

That said, I'm NOT talking about a major regional (or bigger) event - like the Florida 300 or whatever. Absolutely, everyone that is putting a lot of effort into a campaign for that event should expect a fair and refined playing field - real handicap numbers should definitely be required.

And yes, Portsmouth is pretty much static at this point. I don't think anyone can actually run the statistics to do a real refresh on a single rating and, even if they were able to, I doubt they're getting any event results submitted to them.