The classic and vintage racing dinghy association have always tried to provide the closest and most fun racing available for older boats.
We have all had to spend most of our time racing within and against modern plastic boats often on the same handicap as our older boat. Of course we set up the cvrda to provide us with good racing for the old boats, but we still need to have a handicap system to make it all work.
A key date for the cvrda is 1965 and all boats built before that date can race within
our classic wing. We have chosen to base our handicap system on the 1965 Portsmouth Yardstick System.
However, we normally only use this as a base figure which we then adjust dependent on the age, condition and amount of modernisation that the boat has had.
So you will see that a vintage Merlin will have a figure a little higher than the standard classic PN, and an old Merlin will have a figure a little lower. We also allow the race committee to adjust the handicap a bit dependent upon the ‘state of tune’; a fully modernised boat will expect to have their handicap lowered a little and a boat sailing with original (or lovingly made replacement!) wooden mast or fittings will be blessed with a little higher number. Boats using original cotton sails should have at least 6 points added to the handicap, as the sails are no longer competitive with Dacron, and it will be nice to see more cotton sailed boats racing!
A boat with new cotton sails should have her handicap adjusted as seen fit by the race committee.
Current Handicaps
If you are intending to use sailwave to score a cvrda event please use the links below to help.

Or just download the CVRDAHandicaps to use with your favoured race scoring system (these are intended as a guide only)
(Right Click…Save target as…..’choose location on your computer where you want to save file)

The downloadable file is a .csv file that will open in Microsoft Excel, Word or Notepad
If you have any problems or questions about how to use the .csv file, or how to set up sailwave to use them please post a question on the forum
This CSV file can be copied straight into the ratings folder of Sailwave, and will give instant cvrda race calculations (note: ensure only one csv file at a time is in the ratings folder, otherwise much confusion can occur)
Go to www.sailwave.com to get the latest free version of Sailwave
To set Sailwave to work with these numbers you will have to change the scoring system to USSA Portsmouth: With a series open, select scoring system from the tool bar, select the rating system tab, and then click on the USSA Portsmouth option.