In pursuit of the Holy Grail

Jim Teeters, Head of the Offshore Ratings Office at US Sailing, and Alan Gilbert, former Chief Engineer, and Executive Vice President at S&S Swan, provide unique insights into yacht design and how rating systems have shaped competitive sailing over the decades:

The history of rating and handicapping sailboats goes back almost 200 years. As soon as two dissimilar boats raced each other, attempts were made to determine which yacht won. The approach used was to measure what was perceived as the critical speed producing characteristics of a yacht and plug these numbers into an algorithm.

That algorithm calculated the inherent speed of each of the two yachts in the form of a rating, typically expressed in units of length such as feet or meters. The rating difference would be converted into a time allowance given to the slower yacht. This time allowance reduced the slower boats elapsed time to what is termed “corrected” time. The boat with the faster (smaller) corrected time would be the winner. – Full report