When ever you start mixing fleets and using handicaps, things go to crap quickly. The wind is almost never the same from the starting time to the finising time, for all boats, so some have better wind than others, those are the ones who correct out on top, usually. The mono fleet at the Mug race is a prime example. Due to their ratings, they have to start early in the morning when the wind is either light or nil. The cats, being rated much faster, start later in the day after the wind has built, usually, and are sailing the entire race in good wind (sometimes) where as the mono's spend their first 3-4 hours drifting. I don't know when the last time a mono won that race was.

No handicap system will ever be able to take out all the wind variables so you have to pick the races you want to do for the fun of it and hope for a wind that suits your boat/start time.

In my mind that's more of a crap shoot based on the wind than a race, except with the boats that are the same as yours. So I guess first in class is what would matter to me in a distance race. But I prefer buoy racing to distance racing. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />