Saturday’s (February 7th) Annual Conference of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association in the Royal St George YC in Dun Laoghaire will – as is almost inevitable – have a focus on the measurement and rating rules, with a presentation by Nigel Biggs, Chair of the Irish Sailing Handicap Working Group, on the forthcoming introduction of the YTC (Yacht Time Correction) system.
It has been developed under the umbrella of the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s International Rating Certificate (IRC) office, and is seen as a cost-effective entry level system for providing realistic figures to encourage boats of all cruiser-racer types to take part in a spot of racing.
There are those for whom the business of providing workable handicaps is meat and drink. They adore the entire multi-factor business of reaching the broadly-accepted ambition of a feasible system. But for others, no matter what is produced, it’s seen as – well, to put it mildly, it’s seen as a bit of a racket. For real sport – or so they think – racing boats should be One-Design as much as is humanly and technically possible.
GALWAY VICTORY
Yet there are those offshore racers in a handicap fleet for whom the post-race wait is all part of the game – watching while the numbers and placings change as fresh swathes of boats of different sizes and handicaps finish is an added interest. We’ve had a classic of it this week with the Galway Bay SC’s Ronan Considine-skippered Mumm 30 Nagini, the smallest boat in the fleet, known to be out there still racing hard and in contention in the 360-mile Dubai-Muscat Race after the line honours winners had finished.
Now the waiting starts…the Galway crew became provisional leaders when Nagini finished, but her first was still at risk from boats at sea.
But even when Nagini moved to the top of the rankings after finishing in the small hours of Wednesday morning, it was still theoretically possible for her to be toppled by lower-rated boats still at sea, until her win was conclusively confirmed on Thursday.
DUTY BOUND TO OUT-FOX
For the reality you have to accept in creating a measurement system is that, in the case of one-offs, designers will be duty-bound to out-fox you. And those who have standard production boats may well turn to Rating Consultants to optimise their handicap numbers, sometimes resulting in significant changes.
Thus we find that the hot class of J/109s in the Greater Dublin area have ratings in which the highest is sometimes nearly ten points above the lowest rated, yet they still get valid racing when they opt to compete as a One-Design Class.
The successful J/109 Storm (Pat Kelly, Rush SC) can race as either an OD or a rated boat. Photo: Afloat.ie
In fact, getting the rating just that point or two lower than the figure for virtual or actual sister-ships can be a very shrewd strategic move. Going into the 1987 Fastnet Race, ace boat tuner Jo Richards focused on getting the rating for the Dubois 40 Irish Independent – racing for the Irish Admirals Cup team with Tim Goodbody (RIYC) as lead helm – just two or three points under the ratings of her sisters.
NECK-AND-NECK FINISH
When the 40-footers swept into the finish at Plymouth abeam of each other, they were if anything closer together than they’d been at the start off Cowes. So Irish Independent won – albeit narrowly – in that division. It was exactly as Jo had planned. And it was a bonus that she won the Fastnet Race overall, and emerged as the top scoring boat in the entire Admirals Cup series.
The Dubois 40 Irish Independent racing for Ireland in the Fastnet Race and Admiral’s Cup in first place as she she rounds the Rock in August 1987.
But working a system as complex as the IRC – and the IOR before it – can be an expensive business, so you can see the attraction of a standardized system based totally on boat potential. Nevertheless with a relatively stable sailing community with definable neighbourhoods such as we have in Ireland, a very strong case can be made for the enthusiastic continuation of the ECHO performance system and its offshoots.
Our club racing system is so strong and steadily supported, with most owners living relatively near their clubs and boat base, that it is possible to have realistic rolling performance handicap systems applied within One-Design classes in the localities where they race regularly and in strength, hopefully providing a sailing equivalent of the Golf Handicap.
The Howth 17s may be One Designs of 1898 vintage, but they maintain interest at all levels of the class by having a Performance Rating division – with many trophies – running in parallel with the Scratch Results.
BELFAST NOTION
The irony is that while it was the Belfast Branch of the Golfing Union of Ireland which first introduced the now globally-accepted golf handicap system in 1893, in the north’s sailing community few if any One-Design Classes incorporate a performance handicap set of results in their seasonal totals. Yet in the Republic, the best-established ODs see their performance handicapped results as being of considerable significance, and well worthy of their own array of trophies, which in turn reinforces the health of the class.
Time was when the yacht racing handicappers – regardless of the type of sailing – worked in secret. They could maybe even be unknown to all but a few, and were protected by rules or traditions which banned anyone who questioned his decisions. And it was always “his”, for this was in the day when he might have a wife who was the mathematical genius in creating the system, but it has to be remembered that in the early days, the very idea of handicapping was anathema, and it had to be introduced with certain protocols in place.
In those parts of the world that were becoming ludicrously wealthy through the industrial revolution and imperial exploitation, maleness was assumed, and it was thought an offence in the face of God and nature and progress if the man with the largest fastest boat didn’t win.
PROTOCOLS FOR IRC MEASUREMENT
Thus the application of handicaps can become such an emotionally-fraught business that back in July 2017, the Ratings Office issued the following guidelines to their measurers, and it’s a document to be cherished:
“IRC Measurement July 2017
You are measuring a boat for the owner, BUT on behalf of the rest of the fleet. The aim is thus to achieve a fair and accurate result, rather than the optimum result for the particular owner. These are not necessarily the same thing. A professional approach and attitude is also very important. The owner is paying for your services, and wants to have confidence in the measurements you take, both on his own boat and also on his competitors' boats.
This cannot be emphasised sufficiently; whilst the owner you are dealing with may be scrupulously fair, he is certain that his opposition are anything but. He needs the confidence that you will not let them get away with it! In this context, if you are not sure, refer to the rule book or contact the IRC Rating Authority (via your local IRC Rule Authority) for clarification. Always explain what you are doing and show the owner the measurement outcome, particularly if it is not in his favour!
He is going to get an unpleasant surprise anyway when his certificate arrives; better that he should know there and then and understand why. Measurers should NOT however discuss the effect on TCC of changes. Owners should be advised to contact the IRC Rating Authority through their Rule Authority.”
BOAT OF THE WEEK
At least, though, once the Rating is calculated and accepted by the owner, that is the job done and dusted. But maintaining a successful performance handicap system requires dedicated number crunching two or three times a week, and continuously in a four day regatta. And yes, of course we realise that a surreptitious change of personnel in mid-regatta makes a nonsense of the whole thing, but when it all works properly and a keen but only so-so performer emerges as “Boat of the Week” at the regatta’s conclusion, it can be a very satisfactory outcome every which way.
The 1950-built Uffa Fox-designed Huff of Arklow was able to get successful racing in Dun Laoghaire Regatta when she returned in restored form in 2015. The word is that Huff is currently getting yet another restoration in North Wales. Photo: VDLR
Certainly this was the case in the Dun Laoghaire Regatta in 2015, when the restored Huff of Arklow of 1950-vintage turned up after decades of absence from a harbour where she had been a super-star in the 1950s, and in 2017 for the Dun Laoghaire Bicentenary, when the 1897 Alexander Richardson-designed Myfanwy, restored from near-dereliction by Rob Mason of Milford Haven, came to race in the Classics.
The 1897 Alexander Richardson-designed Myfanwy (Rob Mason) was a completely unknown quantity when she arrived from Milford Haven in Dun Laoghaire for the Classics Division of the Bicentenary Regatta in 2017, but performance handicapping soon gave her realistic racing. Photo: Afloat.ie
Both were complete unknowns as regards handicap figures. But with results for ECHO coming in thick and fast, within a day both were getting realistic racing and giving of their best, and there was no argument at the two prize-givings when Huff and Myfanwy won the “Boat of the Regatta” trophy.
In tracing the development of the different rating rules, it provides a fresh viewpoint when you factor in the boats which did conspicuously well. For instance, John Illingworth’s conspicuously short-ended 40-footer Myth of Malham from 1947 may have seemed to sail right through loopholes in the early RORC Rule to win the 1947 and 1949 Fastnet Races, but other short-ended imitations didn’t necessarily show so well, and Owen Aisher’s Yeoman with reasonable overhangs bow and stern won in 1951.
John Illingworth’s short-ended Myth of Malham won the Fastnet Race in 1947 and again in 1949……..
…….but the more normally shaped Yeoman (right, Owen Aisher) was the Fastnet winner of 1951. Owen Aisher’s grand-daughter Sally O’Leary of Crosshaven is co-owner of the restored Northele, on left in this photo.
Then through the 1950s, the focus swung to America, where Carleton Mitchell’s “fat and shallow” S&S-designed yawl Finisterre won three Bermuda Races on the trot, but complaints about the type being favoured by the CCA rule over-looked the fact that each time round, there were more sister-ships in the race, yet they didn’t take the prize.
“The little fat wonderboat” – Carleton Mitchell’s legendary S&S-designed Finisterre won the Bermuda Race under the CCA Rule in 1956, 1958 and 1960.
ORC V IRC
More recently, we’ve had the “super-transparent” ORC taking on the challenge of replacing the IRC. Yet back in the Autumn last year, all seemed to be kerfuffle in the ORC bunker when it was discovered that the new XR 41 from Denmark had struck rating gold. Andy Camarda of 180Sails explains why:
“The XR 41 was developed in the same spirit as the successful JPK designs, creating a boat that looks slow on a velocity prediction program while being very fast on the water. Designers and sailors have been playing this game for as long as rating rules have existed. Sailing organizations attempt to fairly rate boats, and designers look for blind spots in those systems. With the XR 41, X Yachts appears to have found one.
The hull is unlike anything else on the water. Instead of a chine on the outside of the hull, the boat has a defined crease running down the middle of the bottom, creating a square, flat underside. At rest it looks as though the boat is balancing on a ridge. When heeled, the hull presents a large flat surface to the water. This shape may not be the fastest hydrodynamically, but it proved exceptionally slow in ORC’s VPP. The flat panels on either side of the center ridge distorted the drag coefficient calculation that ORC uses to estimate resistance and hull speed.
The boat that sailed straight through the ORC Rule in 2025 – the XR 41
The outcome was a boat that appeared slow on paper but sailed far faster in real life. That discrepancy gave the XR 41 a clear advantage and exposed a blind spot in ORC’s drag model. During ORC Worlds, the organization collected black box data from the boats to compare their real world speeds with the VPP predictions. Because the event attracts top level teams sailing to their full potential, the data is highly reliable.
One boat stood out. The XR 41 outperformed its predicted speeds by a wide margin, confirming that something in the rating was off.
This left ORC with a difficult problem. Identifying the flaw is one thing, correcting it is far more complex. ORC’s rating system is built around a sophisticated algorithm applied to all boats. Unlike observed performance systems such as PHRF, ORC cannot simply adjust the rating of one boat. The underlying algorithm must be updated to address the flaw for every boat in the system. ORC makes small annual adjustments to the VPP, but correcting a fundamental issue in the drag model is not something that can be done quickly.
In response, ORC took the unprecedented step of manually adjusting the XR 41’s rating outside of the algorithm. At the same time, they committed engineering resources to updating the VPP so that hull shapes like the XR 41 are properly modeled and the drag equation is corrected.
This may feel punitive to XR 41 owners, and I understand the frustration. Many purchased the boat based on its early performance, and seeing the rating adjusted can feel like being singled out. But it is the right call. The situation is reminiscent of the later days of the IOR rule, when designers built boats to exploit the rule rather than to sail well. Hulls became wide with pinched ends, bumps were added to hit measurement points, and stability suffered. The rule dictated design, and the boats suffered for it.
Addressing the XR 41 head on may prevent ORC from drifting toward a similar outcome where a single optimized hull shape dominates and everything else becomes obsolete. A healthy rating rule gives diverse designs a level playing field, allowing sailors to choose boats they enjoy and still race competitively.
Summary
The XR 41 exposed a blind spot in ORC’s drag model by sailing much faster than its VPP predicted. ORC confirmed the discrepancy using data from the World Championship and took the unusual step of manually adjusting the boat’s rating while committing to update the VPP. Although controversial, the move protects the long term health of the rule and prevents yacht design from being driven into a narrow corner by a single exploit. Fair racing depends on a rating rule that supports a diverse fleet, not one optimized around a loophole."
NOTHING NEW?
The XR 41 story shows that we’ve reached a very sophisticated level in Rating Rule management, and obviously AI has already moved in big time. But each era brings its XR 41s, and back in 1896 the XR41 of her day was a boat called Niagara, belonging to an American squillionaire called Howard Gould.
Howard Gould’s support vessel, the steam/schooner Atalanta, departing Dun Laoghaire in 1896. Photo: Courtesy Cormac Lowth
The very soul of respectability – Howard Gould in Atalanta’s saloon. Photo courtesy Cormac Lowth
As the old saying would have it, “Behind every great fortune lies a crime”, and Gould was the very proper son of classic robber baron Jay Gould, one of that select group who took over America’s west with land grabs and railroad schemes in the turbulent period after the end of the Civil War of the 1860s.
Gould’s Niagara looked like a typically modern gaff cutter of the late 1890s above the water, but when he came to Europe with his steam yacht Atalanta, Niagara proved so mysteriously fast that he had great difficulty in getting anyone to race against him.
When she appeared in 1896, Howard Gould’s Niagara had the look of the new style as set by Britannia and Valkyrie.
In Dublin Bay, after the American cutter had sustained damage to her stem, when she was dried out in the everyday setting of Dun Laoghaire’s Coal Harbour for repairs the shape of her underbody said everything. Only sporty little Half Raters had separate rudder and keel like this at the time. It took decades before others followed, and even today there’s many an old salt will tell you that long heavy underbody as seen on the ketch beyond Niagara, is the only way to be sure of a steady helm.
When Niagara was dried out along the Dun Laoghaire quayside, it was revealed just how very advanced she was. Photo: Courtesy Cormac Lowth
