Hi Dan,

I couldn't rate my own boat, of course, so another guy did it. Running my Mistral through the Schell regression formula, it spit out a 180, which is about what I figured it should be. He gave me a 150 and made my old, heavy CCA design Mistral the scratch boat in the fleet. I was giving time to everyone, including an Aloha 30, S2 7.9s, and other go fast boats. It was ridiculous. It was the "we can always raise it later" reasoning, but what it does is to discourage people from racing. On the flip side of the coin, if he rated my boat 210 and I wiped up the race course, the go fast boats would be howling in protest.

I was always of the opinion that everyone thinks everyone's PHRF rating is wrong except for the guy who wins. PHRF racing should only be for fun since handicaps can't account for all wind and wave conditions, nor the preparation of the boat and the skills of the crew, none of which are supposed to be considered in calculating a handicap.

The only truly fair racing is one design, to strict rules to keep all the boats equal. But if a fleet is going to use PHRF, then the ratings must be done fairly and objectively, and the fleet must be divided into classes of spinnaker and non-spinnaker, racing and cruising, and assign boats in each class so that the PHRF rating is within 20 or 30 seconds a mile. Also, use time-on-time and not time-on-distance for calculating results.

Best,
Dave