The Offshore Racing Congress (ORC) is highlighting the transparency of its rating system in advance of this year's AGM that will be conducted online.
Some Rating rule systems for yachts are often operated behind closed doors, with decisions and policies made without user input and rule formulations left unpublished to protect “rule integrity” and other such opaqueness. The underlying justification for this policy often lies in an imperious assumption that the rule makers know what’s best, with no formalised system of feedback to solicit input for improvements to the rules.
The promoters of ORC say this is not the case with its own technology rating, where, they say, the principles of transparency are practised each year at this time during the Annual Meeting. Submissions sent by users of the system through their national authority will be discussed in open committee sessions, with proposals and their rationales published in advance, as are the committee agendas, so that the public may observe and (at the discretion of the Chairman) also participate in the discussions.
This year the meetings of the ORC AGM are being held on ZOOM over Saturday, October 31 – Saturday, November 7, and members of the big boat sailing public are invited to observe by registering in advance at www.orc.org/meetings. Here the full schedule of committee meetings, their agendas and submissions are also published.
Once meeting minutes are created – usually within days – these too are published, along with approvals of changes made by the Congress. The new rules, policies and formulations are then published as soon as possible after January 1st in time for the new year’s racing season.
More on ORC here
