As a P.S to my above post, seems to sum it up.
From the "Curmudgeon" at SailingScuttelbutt.com
* From Ray Tostado: After surviving over 25 years of PHRF and some 10 years
of IOR, I still find a fascination when ratings are heatedly discussed. The
recent proposal of incorporating some sort of golf handicapping seems
reasonable. But then so did IOR. Golf is based on a handicap based on prior
finishes. Not by player's height, weight, or wardrobe. Shouldn't this be
PHRF? Golf reads to me to be the PHRF of lawn sailing. The problem with
PHRF is the lack of impartiality from the rating committees. They are
attempting to "predict" as did IOR. It is not their mission statement to
predict anything. Their goal should be recording prior finishes: performance.

It is interesting that the most event-to-event adjustments to rating
standards are evolving from the Cruz classes. But even this has gone
berserk. Imagine what sort of reasoning is demonstrated when a 53' boat
with a base rating of 30 spm arrives at a Cruz class start with an
adjustment to 117 spm. But don't overlook the generous adjustment from 30
to 78 under local area PHRF. For PHRF to recover, the ratings should be
derived through a national, not local, rating body. Data is data, and it
can be stored and used without local friendships becoming involved. A
finish position is a fact. Forget the variables, there is simply no
rational means of finding consensus when everyone sees the event from their
own deck. Finding wind to port, rather than starboard is a choice, not a
rating factor.

Also ponder this:
Should, for example, a Catalina 30 owned by Ma and Pa Beerswiller from Hot Coffee Ms. rate the same as one owned by Dennis Conner . If they do the latter will win every time. Will Ma and Pa become discouraged and quit, probably. Do we want Ma and Pa to keep coming to our events, of course, we can't survive with out them! Ours is a sport on the decline (check the LPRC scratch sheets from the 70s and 80s vs last year).
Not everyone can afford to indulge in OD, some of us need a boat that will also include the wife/husband and kids for that weekend cruise (not to mention the girlfriend/boyfriend on tuesday afternoon).
We need some kind of handicaping system that will rate "Ma and Pa" vs "Dennis" fairly or we'll end up with the Finn/Laser/Sunfish/Fish Boat/J-22/J-24/ID-35/ect all doing their own thing and Ma and Pa selling their boat and quitting the club.
So, what to do? I sure as hell don't know! I'm just sitting here, in Baton Rouge, sipping on some "151" that someone gave me for Christmas and wishing I could see water.