You guys speak with too many words!

Mark,

OK - your point is a good one. The class of folks that I was racing in the open class were not as experienced or skilled as the group that I race against now. However, if I'm realtively new to sailing and go out racing a 6.0 amongst a Supercat 20, a Prindle 18 and 2 G-cat 5.0s, I'm never going to be able to understand how to extract the full potential from my boat (and theoretically thereafter, sail to the rating) no matter how good these guys are. They wouldn't be able to help me with the nuances of my boat. I have received copious amounts of help and advice from many different very high caliber sailors in our area but until I got on the water with the same equipment that they had, I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

So are you saying that you believe that you can actually learn more by sailing your platform amongst a variety of boats?