One of the other threads concerns dissatisfaction with Porthsmouth scoring. I've always been dissatisfied with Portsmouth.
Has anyone ever tried standardizing the race courses, as in golf? All golf courses are different, but they are mostly par, 71 or 72, or whatever. Each golfer, over time, developes a handicap recognized by all other golfers.
If we could establish, "par" courses for sailing then you could keep your own score and decide for yourself whether or not you had a good day competitively. Such a system wouldn't necessarily affect awards or any other existing system. It would just provide the average sailor with an emperical measure of performance and, hopefully, provide incentive to continue in the sport, with or without a trophy!
Whatcha' think Wouter. Learned a bunch from you last go round, hoping to learn more this time! 
I have been active in this field in the past, I even redesigned a whole rating system, but I left that behind me now.
It comprises an insane amount of work with pretty poor chances for succes. Evnetually I just lacked the time to continue the project and ended my involvement. I would like to keep it that way. Afterall, I'm personally not needing of a new system. I decided to focus all my attention on a different approach, one that has alot better succes rate. I refer to my F16 boat = same performance as F18 on each individual course, first over the line wins; no handicap calculations required. Been doing this for 2 years now and would have been 3rd at my club race championship if I didn't miss one crucial race weekend due to illness. And yes I had to beat a few F18's to achieve that.
For this coming race season 2 I-20's crews changed to F18's (infusions), leaving only one I-20 in our clubraces. In addition we are expecting 2 more F16's (both Blades) in this series, so 3 in total. This will put us at a race series (15 to 20 races) of about 15 boats (the dedicated core) with 3 non-spi boats (oldies), 1 I-20, 3 F16's and 8 F18's. In this fleet the F16/F18 will race first in wins (no matter whether F16's are sailed solo or doublehanded); So 11 out of the 15 boats will not use handicap numbers. In time we'll see the remaining oldies move to F18's or F16's as well.
I see a similar trend around me. So I feel that handicap systems will be used less and less. Equally performing boats will be the bulk of the fleets. For this reason I'm not nearly as interested in handicap systems as I was before. I'm only interested in making the F16's as much equally fast to the F18's on all courses as possible.
So, I'm sorry but I won't be of much help in this thread.
Wouter
Philippe Kahn wrote an article about his perceived need for a handicap system.
Here is the link
http:/
Here is a link to a discussion about it
http:/
Matt
Thanks guys.
I once heard a story (don't remember where) about a club where, each time you won a race, you were given a short piece of rope with a knot tied in the end. You had to tie it to your boat and drag the knot in the water behind you thereafter. By the end of the season, bragging rights were accorded by how many knots you were dragging.
I like it!