I recently participated in the Marion-Bermuda race in my 361. As some of you may have been told by USSail, in order to get a valid Americap II rating, one of us had to come up with about $2000 dollars to have the boat measured. I thought then, and still think now, that that was excessive for one person to pay for the measurement of a boat that is only raced once in a while under Americap II. For the Marion-Bermuda race I was given a “provisional” rating that, I was told, was conservative in order to protect those that had their boat measured. As I reported before, in spite of the conservative rating, I finished 2 in my class. (As you can see, given the rating assigned, Ipanema was the smaller boat in her C2 class http://marionbermuda.com/2003/index.shtml ) Incredibly, we were able to finish the race in 101 hours with a corrected time that placed us in 12 position overall. Of note is that we finished ahead of all but two of the 11 boats that placed in front of us in corrected time. Those boats were a Sequin 44 and a Farr 72 !!!. At question is the effect of the “provisional” rating on Ipanema’s finish. Although it is hard to estimate for the whole fleet, if you note that the winner in my C2 class was Lullaby, a Starratt 44, you can see that in spite of the fact that this was the fastest race in history for the Marion-Bermuda, and that Ipanema finished almost 4 hours in front of the 8 ft longer Lullaby, Ipanema ended 20 minutes behind that boat in corrected time!!!. Further analyzing the effect of the rating it became clear that with the ratings assigned to both boats, the average speed had to be > 12 knots for Ipanema not to have to give time to Lullaby. This of course is an impossibility for a 36 ft boat and even for a 44 ft. Any way, the reason for this posting is not to lean in the past, but to see if we can do something for the future. For example, we could try to get Beneteau USA to pay the measuring of one 361 that could be used as a sistership by USsail. Alternatively, we could try to get enough interested parties and share the cost of the measurements. Once one boat is measured the rest will receive a similar rating modified only by the sail inventory. Any thoughts or suggestions will be appreciated. Please e-mail me directly at jvenegas@vqpet.mhg.harvard.edu if you would like to explore the posibility of sharing the cost of measuring a 361. I need a head count.