[nardi]

I totally understand that, and I realize that I sound stupid to anyone who follows sailing. What my comment was intended to do was represent the viewpoint of someone who isn't used to that interpretation of the word "fair." My comment was intended as a critique of the sport—to the layman (by which I really mean "to me") it seems like the fastest boat should win in a boat race.

[jacquesm]

Well, then why bother with just sails? Might as well power up then. The problem here is that no two boats are alike and that sailboats design parameters have a direct effect on their top speed (hull length being the most important one).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_speed

If you want to race two different boats (and they're almost all different) you will have to use some kind of handicap.

So any race without a handicap would immediately penalize the shorter boats. And then it becomes a race of who has the most money. The three different kinds of races (handicap, rating, one design) mean that everybody gets to compete how they want. Once you enter a race under those conditions when you win, you win for real.

And no-one in their right mind would enter a boat into a race they'd already lost before it started so you can consider any of that very hard fought for, sailing is tremendously competitive.

In the late 80's in between a lot of other stuff I did back then I worked for a while for a very state-of-the-art sailmaker in the Netherlands to write CAD software to create sail designs and cut-plans. So I'm not a sailor or anything like that but I've read quite a bit about it and worked with people that spent as much of their lives on the water as off and I know that they would take a remark like that in a very bad way.

For two boats that are equal the differentiating factors in actual speed (so otherwise equal conditions) are crew, sails, stays, mast. It's not rare to see a better crew out-sail a much better boat.

One boat is a cruise, two boats is a race.

[001sky]

The headline isn't deceitful, but similarly its not completely unfair for the reader to expect an (Economist style) explanation of "winning" in any race with such a headline. FKTs on routes like trans-oceanic voyages are still a viable and interesting form of racing. You also have one design races in the olympics and winner-take all "rules" like the Americas Cup. Handicapps have their place but not all sailors rate them as the best/default form of racing. (That they are really geared toward financial considerations of the asset owners/and their accountants, and have little to do with pure racing, may have something to do with it).

[randomfool]

The headline is about the boat winning the race, but my understanding is that the handicap is to even the field for sailors, regardless of their boat. So it's misleading to focus so much on the boat.