Possibly a silly question, but I wondered if there was any handicap formula that might allow multiple classes of RC boats to race against one another? My racing experience in dingy sailing is limited, but different boat classes/designs could race against one another 'fairly' by altering the finishing time of each boat by an agreed handicap. Enabling older RC boat designs to race against much faster, more modern design could be great in RC racing. Does something like this exist? Is it even possible?

My experience is thats its best to have a " staggered" start. The slower class starts off either the Prep signal or a pre agreed earlier start. Beginners from the faster class could start off this early signal.

And in a perfect world, all boats finish together- but of course this wont happen which allows for altering the staggered start times for the next start.

This format also allows the fast boats to practice overtakes,rather than beiing in the lead within seconds and sailing round alone as from a " normal" start

Thanks Ian, yes I think that's how the club set up races. I guess i'm wondering if a 1 meter, a 6 meters, a marblehead, a 36, a df95 and df65..etc, were all racing; who would start first, and what would be the approximate handicaps/delayed start time be for each class? How could this be worked out? It would be great to have our older wooden boats able to compete more fairly with their younger fibreglass siblings.

As we have the same course each week, by timing a boat from each classes finish time with the same sailor helming each boat to eliminate sailor skill, then working out the adjustment needed for each finish time to be identical, we should be able to create a rough handicap for each class to allow boats to compete against one another in a single staggered start race.

I'm not an experienced sailor with much race experience but I am on the right track?

The other option is to have multiple windward marks, the fastest skippers go round the furthest mark.

In my opinion all starting at once is preferred, then everyone gets the benefit of learning the art of starting and beating up the first beat. The slower guys pealing off earlier to start the run, do that for each lap and everyone should keep coming back together several times and making it more fun each lap and not just at the finish, eventually all finishing at the sometime.