I don't get this. On the basis that I might on a mad whim decide to race Messing About I applied for a handicap. I was told to apply through PHRF MA, which I assumed meant Massachusetts. I was given 226 as my racing PHRF and 240 as my cruising PHRF. Holy crap, I thunk to myself, I could finish a day later than the rest of the non-spinnaker fleet and still win.
I was informed that the MA meant Mid-Atlantic. Ah! That would make sense as I sail in the Mid-Atlantic not New England. I filled out their form with the same information as I had used with Mass. but this time I got a PHRF of 171. What the ….. OK so it's a rating most of the boats I might race against would give parts of their body for but how can there be such a big discrepancy?
Answers on a postcard (or comments?)
Well done for an excellent piece of investigative journalism that exposes what beer can racers have long suspected: PHRF handicaps are allocated by a random number generator.
Did they use the correct algorithm to measure your beer can holder? PHRF SoCal seems to have a very developed system with ratings for mixed leg, windward-leeward, and offwind courses and local modifications of ratings. Our nearest PHRF mostly follows the SoCal ratings, but every once in a while I see a boat whose rating is significantly — say 18 seconds per mile or more — different from the typical ratings elsewhere. There seems to be a lot of latitude in applying modifiers, in particular.