The handicap horrors

by David Salter, SWS
If there’s one thing we all know for absolute sure and certain about handicaps in yacht racing it’s that yours is outrageously generous and mine isn’t fair. It’s the most common complaint of sailors.

Nobody says, “Oh, that’s too generous, better give me another 0.1 on my TCF or put our start time back a couple of minutes”. Nobody. If you Google “yacht handicaps” one of the first entries that comes up is a rant entitled “Our club handicapper is an idiot!”

Everyone thinks they know how to do handicaps better. Most attempts at genuine standardization have failed. We have international systems, national systems, class systems and club systems. World Sailing, the governing body for all yacht racing, defines the principle thus: click here