Well...if I had sent my results from last year's Tommy Whiteside, the F16 rating would be getting SLOWER! Hahaha.

I'm generally skeptical of handicap racing in general. However, there are some fundamental differences in the methods btw. Portsmouth and the European/Australian systems.

Portsmouth is based comparing the results of new boats to that of better known boats (right?). This assumes a parity in level of boat preparation and skipper skill and requires what I would consider to be a huge amount of data to be statistially relevant. My guess is that the rating Portsmouth has for F16 is based on an initial guess and that no volume of data has been accumulated to adjust it one way or the other.

The European/Australian ones are based on formulas of key speed indicating measurements on the boat. These measurements won't change based on results of the racing. If there is some huge disparity between it points to a flaw in the ratings model. This happened in the keelboat arena with the advent of the sprit/sportboats. Basically, the mathmatical model couldn't accurately predict the results for the vastly different performance profiles.

Which one is right? Beats the hell out of me. My mantra....say NO to math! Hahaha.

Jeff.