In Detroit some of us race JAM a couple of evenings a week. Our Detroit PHRF base rating is 144 and our one design rating is 138 due to a six second spinnaker pole penalty. For main and jib rating we have asked the sponsoring clubs for the 144 rating on the theory that why should we pay a 6-second spinnaker pole penalty when we aren't using spinnakers. We convinced the sponsoring clubs to give us the 144 jib and main rating. However, another boat in our class has complained on the basis that we do benefit from from the long pole when we use it as a whisker pole to wing out the #1 genoa or #3 jib. The issue remains unresolved. We've pointed out a couple of big boats we race against who use collapsible whisker poles that look like they are longer than the J dimension. As a result we're saying that if the committee is going to give us a 6-second pole penalty, to be fair, they should measure all the poles that are in use in the evening races. They haven't done that and we are still racing with a 144 rating. The RC has proposed a 3-second penalty for us, as a compromise, instead of 6 seconds. Basically PHRF racing sucks, in my opinion. Politics get into the ratings and the spread between the high and low boats is too wide for good results.