So you guys now see how much favoritism you have under US portsmouth, especially with that uni-rig (1-up) rating of 67.3 against the 62.4 of the F18's. I race of a rating that is no less then 9 % FASTER then that !

Personally I would have liked to have kept the "equal to F18" handicaps for both setups as I had last year and the year before that. But we now have some old gid doing the scoring for us this year (not even a catamaran sailor at any point in his life, only lead mines) and he refuses to do so. Even when I senior him by being the Race official of our club. Go figure. But I didn't press the matter as honestly I can't do that, being official race officer, and because I really don't think 1 rating point is that significant.

For years now I have been saying that 1 or 2 rating points mean most often nothing as the time difference under texel of 1 point is only 24 seconds per 40 min race. Hardly ever are the results that tight that such a correction puts you higher on the the final listing. This weekend was no exception. On both ratings I would have placed the same in the final listing.

Personally however I don't believe that I can outperform F18's and double handed F16's on elapsed time, not on my boat. Equal performance or just below that is about right. I don't see myself on a basically modified 17 year old Taipan design beat (consistantly) double handed Blade F16's by 40 seconds per 40 min race. Not in these conditions. That is asking to much of the boat (and maybe also skipper)

I was perfectly happy when the F16's (1-up and 2-up) and F18's were sharing the same rating, But again 1 and 2 handicap point differences are not too much. I just need to get a little lucky and find a favoured course upwind somewhere.

Wouter