Its essential for sailors to actually look at the real time that seperates them from the leaders. Sailwave makes this quite easy! All of the race results that CRAC publishes included the elapsed time the portsmouth corrected time and what is now called BCE. This last number is the important one to look at. It tells you HOW many minutes you needed on your boat to save around the course in order to win (obviously a Tornado and a Hobie 16 will differ. Bad starts, slow tacks, wrong decisions can be seen in the numbers.

Indeed boats finished overlapped and boats correct to within seconds. However, Wouter's point is well made... How many seconds are lost at the start? etc? etc?

Nothing is lost and much gained by scoring every one design class seperately to recongize their efforts at class building BUT ALSO scoring the fleet together so that everyone is racing somebody no matter what.