Bruce,
I guess I do not understand your original post. At first I thought you were saying the race committee was going to make you all race boat for boat, with no handicaps applied. But in re-reading it, I have decided you meant that the RC was going to use Portsmouth handicapping. If that is the case, the RC was correct in saying that the Portsmouth handicapping is designed to make it possible for all the boats to race together on an equal basis. In fact, the Portsmouth system is designed so that, in theory, a Tornado could race a Sunfish, and they could correct out equally.

Rhodysail was correct in saying that our Area Qualifiers for the US Sailing Multihull Championship are all raced using Portsmouth handicapping and sometimes include a wide variety of boats, with and without spinnakers.

For most other regattas it is usual procedure to try to put open class boats (Portsmouth handicapping) together based upon relatively comparable Portsmouth ratings, i.e., to start boats of similar speeds together. This makes it more fun for the sailors and makes it easier for the race committee to designate courses and course lengths appropriate for the boat speeds.

However, many regattas here have a five-boat minimum to constitute a fleet. I don't know whether that was the case at the Rolex regatta, but, if so, it is understandable that all the open-class boats had to race together and that it was not feasible to give them separate starts and separate trophies, since there were only three spinnaker boats.

I don't know why you would say it is obvious what boat would win in a diverse group like that. Depending upon the conditions, a Hobie 14 could beat a Hobie Tiger, or a Hobie 17 could beat an I-20.

If it turns out that you really did mean to say that no handicapping was used and it was boat-for-boat racing, please disregard all the above, because that would be totally ridiculous.