The development of Artificial Intelligence seems to be a matter of concern - indeed, downright worry - for many people. But as far as simple sailors are concerned, AI is happening in the nick of time to help and protect and guide us as yet another stage in the Great Rating Rules Debate is reached. For we find ourselves in the modern manifestation of an ancient world of the mysterious acronyms of handicap systems here. RORC or CCA? IOR or CH? IMS or PHF? Thames Measurement or Acker’s? And now, IRC or ORC? Where to go? Where to hide?
Rules-distorted hull. The Fife-designed Clara of 1884 was built to exploit the Thames Measurement Rule, which penalized beam. The much-raked (and inefficient) rudder dates from a time when keel length was a significant determinant.
Jullanar of 1875 had been created by an agricultural implements manufacturer partly to show that vertical rudders made more sense, but the raking trend got worse until……..
….in 1963, the Fastnet Race overall winner was the S&S-designed Clarion of Wight - unbeatable to windward, unmanageable downwind. She was subsequently very successfully changed to fin and skeg configuration
There are those who, in this Centenary Year of the Fastnet Race and the Royal Ocean Racing Club, feel that it is akin to sacrilege to contemplate an alternative to that most distinguished Club’s IRC. And certainly if you try a speedy cybersearch for more on ORC, you’ll find an Orc is of a fictional race of humanoid monsters, a “hell-devil”.
That said, in the quaint South Dublin dialect, the Ork is the vessel on which Noah sailed. So most appropriately, there was an intense meeting in Dun Laoghaire on Tuesday (October 21st) of The Elders and Young Turks of Irish Cruiser-Racer sailing, the topic IRC v ORC. We are told it was at times quite heated as viewpoints were clarified.
The modern ideal? The Botin 52 Django Deer, a very close second in the Rolex Midde Sea Race 2025, is optimized to create a minimum of “splash and bash” as she moves through the water. Photo: Kurt Arrigo
MEGA-MEETINGS IN DUN LAOGHAIRE
For time is short, as World Sailing’s conference descends on us, and the 2025 ORC AGM (the global gathering) is scheduled for the Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire from 31st October to November 4th. Some sort of sensible positioning is required. There’s a lot to learn just from websites. But unfortunately, staffing arrangements at Afloat.ie do not run to a Religious Affairs correspondent, let alone a Philosophy adviser, so you’re on your own in absorbing everything in this link to the Offshore Racing Congress
IDEALISM
There’s a massive amount of information and – let’s face it – idealism to be absorbed, but you may have free time to be usefully absorbed over the Bank Holiday Weekend, unless you live in one of those ancient many-roomed houses where every last minute is needed to put all the clocks back by an hour.
At first appraisal, the ORC ambition to provide fair play for everyone is almost overpowering. The system’s evangelists are so keen to take every factor into account that we expect that soon the extra computing power of AI will enable each crew to have an instant psycho-physiological assessment before racing. Who knows, but in due course having a certifiable hangover may be allowed for in benefiting your rating for the day.
SERIOUS STUFF
Lest anyone think we’re being frivolous here, believe me this columnist has been through it all. Back in the day, the club measurer tried to lead a monastic existence, as otherwise everyone would be leaning on him or her, while the attention of an RORC measurer had all the trappings of a State Visit.
Then there was the sweet idealism of IOR, inclination tests and freeboard measurement and God knows what else. Owners or owners representatives might be told to clear off, with just the measurer and an official Rating Consultant left to get on with the business.
The Jolly Sailor at Bursledon on the Hamble, a handy place to hide out when the measurer falls in
Once upon a time at Bursledon in the Hamble, I was sent off to the Jolly Sailor pub for an hour to leave the way clear for these two experts to do their stuff on a high-freeboard 47-footer, and returned at the appointed time to find the Rating Consultant a heap of helpless mirth, and no sign of the measurer
With the boat’s high freeboard, there was a gate in the guard-rails, and with so much getting on and off to measure the freeboards, somebody had failed to click it properly shut. The job finished and the hoped-for figure reached, the measurer had leant against the guard-rails at the gate to mop his perspiring brow, and instantly took a free-form dive into the Hamble. He’d gone home to change, leaving the previously stressed consultant simply helpless with laughter.
PAT MURPHY SAVES THE DAY
Some years later, when IOR had been exploited into oblivion, there was the option of Channel Handicap for a realistic figure if your ECHO was through the roof after just one unusually good result. It was the late Pat Murphy, God bless him, who took action to make sure a load cell was available to bring CH forward, even if its use cost money when some of us could barely meet the mortgage. But then, as IRC evolved and took centre stage, those of us who were trying to campaign a genuine cruiser-racer with an adequate supply of anchor chain found that the powers-that-be would not allow the considerable weight of ground tackle to be included in our all-up weight.
SMELLY SEABED
Consequently at major events we were obliged to let the whole lot down to the seabed in order to compete at our measured weight. Having raised 40-plus fathoms of five-eighth chain many times from the seabed after a week of intense racing from some very proper marinas, I regret to have to tell you that the notices requiring berth-holders to use the toilets ashore appeared to have received scant attention - it usually took half an hour with the power-hose before the chain was fit to go into its carefully-constructed vertical locker amidships.
Either ends of the spectrum – Carleton Mitchell’s S&S-designed Finisterre sailed through the Cruising Club of America Rule to such good effect that in the 1950s she won three Bermuda Race in a row……
….while John Illingworth’s very different Myth of Malham was similarly successful, but only under the RORC Rule.
SIGNIFICANT INPUT FROM 2025 RESULTS
At the gathering on Tuesday evening, convened by Fintan Cairns, there was significant input from Dun Laoghaire’s John Kelly with his main focus on an ORC shadowing of the IRC-handicapped Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race and Mark McLoughlin of Howth with input from the 2025 Autumn League ORC, both downloadable below as PDF files.
Dun Laoghaire's Fintan Cairns
There’s certainly something going on, for although there may be as many as 300 boats in Ireland with IRC ratings, boats with an ORC figure now number 93.
Part of the discussion lay in the fact that ORC tries to be totally transparent, whereas IRC still has an admitted “Fudge Factor”. And there’s also a feeling that with ORC there’s accessibility, it’s customer-oriented, whereas IRC is part of the mystique of the RORC, and there’s maybe a bit of a veil around it.
INSIDE TRACK
Old salts might well say that’s just how it should be. Quite a few years ago I was being plagued by a guy who was trying to source a boat for the developing “modern classics” offshore racing class in the Mediterranean. Ultimately, he succeeded brilliantly with the acquisition of the one and only Ganbare herself. But during the search process I was getting emails at any hour of day or night about the continued existence or otherwise of Black Soo etc, and late one August evening there flashed up a signal: “Do you know if Two Tonner Irish Mist II still has IRC rating?”
The Ron Holland-designed Irish Mist II, star of 1975, complete with Rob Jacob artwork on transom.
Apparently he’d found her in some Mediterranean Harbour, so in an apologetic email, I signalled Anthony O’Leary, not expecting a reply until Cowes Week was over. But it came almost immediately:
“Mother of God, here I am in the pub in Cowes after a great day’s racing and enjoying a pint with Rob Jacob, and somebody wants to know that?”.
Yet the follow-up was immediate:
“Hang on, Rob’s trying to reach Mike Urwin”.
And then a minute later:
“We have contact. She’s still rated. Tell your man to enjoy his evening”.
DUN LAOGHAIRE THE HAPPENING PLACE
In its way, the ORC meeting on Tuesday was the opening salvo in an increasingly hectic period of maritime talking shops in Dun Laoghaire, built around the Annual Conference of World Sailing. The programme is revealing:
A busy week coming up in Dun Laoghaire.
You will note that the go-getting ORC are right in there at the start on Hallowe’en Night with a reception in the Royal Irish YC, while the World Sailing Awards, the topic of widest interest for the general sailing community, are in the Royal St George YC on 5th November.
As an associated event, the Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association will be holding their AGM and dinner at the National YC on Saturday, November 8th, while the RORC are flying the flag at the RIYC on Tuesday, November 4th.
CENTENARY OF OFFSHORE RATING RULES
It’s a very appropriate setting, as the Royal Irish is now the home club of the first boat to be built to the Fastnet Rule, the 70ft Fife cutter Hallowe’en of 1926 vintage. This means there’s another very significant Centenary coming up just as we begin to recover from the Festival of Sailing Centenaries which was 1925, but that’s the way it is.
The Fife-designed 70ft Hallowe’en of 1926, the first boat to be designed to fit the RORC Fastnet Rule, at the Royal Irish YC in Dun Laoghaire. Photo: W M Nixon
And it certainly deserves marking, for in that hundred years we have seen offshore racers develop from rules-dictated boats like Hallowe’en and the most marvellous of them all, John Illingworth’s Myth of Malham. She went through the RORC rule in style ten years before Carleton Mitchell’s S&S-designed Finisterre did the same for the Cruising Club of America Rule.
NO CHANCE OF AN “ORC TYPE”?
But now we cannot expect to see an “ORC type” boat. Or can we? Looking at Django Deer, which came a very close second to Balthasar in this week’s Middle Sea Race, we see something very specific that minimises the splash-and-bash factor in making speed at sea. Yet when does this business of resistance reduction result in a boat that takes a plunge as readily as she surfs?
Either way, as Fintan Cairns sagely remarked after Tuesday’s intense discussions, at the end of it all, it will still be the best-prepared, best-tuned and best-crewed boats that will be up there on the podium.
Whoops. Jonathan Waller’s BH41 Silk of Lough Derg YC takes a nosedive in the Solent thanks (perhaps) to a combination of non-surfing hard-driven sailing, and relatively shallow water.
