Our handicapper, Bob Spearman, has many years of experience in handicapping for yacht racing. Here are his comments about the process of handicapping for radio-controlled sailing.

When changing handicaps for yacht racing, I would get both the start and the finishing times so that I would have the elapsed times to work with for each boat. A boat’s handicap is a percentage of time.

In fleets of 12 or more, I would take the 4th placed boat, adjust the handicap for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd up to equal the 4^th time, then the 5^th boat down to equal the 4^th boat.

In fleets under 12 I would use the 3^rd boat.

With radio-controlled boats, unfortunately we don’t have any individual times, so when I get a print out of the result I try to use the same principle.