Following on from Tim Males posting on our internal age related handicapping, I came across a recent document on the Grafham website.  They are reviewing their handicaps. Makes interesting reading.  The proposed Merlin handicap is reduced to 990.
http://www.grafham.org/?page_id=3874

At Midland SC we are reviewing our fleet handicaps too.  Trouble is that our perceptions do not entirely agree with the GLs!  We have also been statistically scientific and come up with some interesting relativities between our limited number of fleets.

Maybe I should attempt a "Shifty Puddles" handicap system?
Any SP nominations?

Probably the key difference between the Great Lakes handicaps and the RYA PYRs is that they tend to reflects the speed of boat sailed by top helms (that seem to attend the Sailjuice Winter Series) rather than a fleet average sailor from which RYA PYRs are largely derived. No handicapping system is perfect but these latest handicaps seem to be fairer across a wider range of classes and proof of this is in the results of the SJ Series where no class has dominated the top places. See http://www.sailracer.us/eventsites/content.asp?eventid=51516&id=9648. 

Another problem with the RYA PYRs is they take a long time to move classes that are clearly wrong - the Laser being a classic example of this.

We concluded at Grafham that there seemed no good reason not to adopt these handicaps for club handicap racing and this seems to be receiving support from within the club. We also allow age related handicap adjustments for FF15's and potentially MR's if they were to sail.

The GLH's are due for review in March and it will be interesting to see what changes are recommended.

My eyes are playing up a bit... was there an "F" in that word??
>>Maybe I should attempt a "Shifty Puddles" handicap system?

Isn't the problem with any 'single' handicap that for most club handicap series there is a very large number of discards (typically 50%) and that heavily disadvantages balanced 'all-round' boats.