Afloat.ie’s “Brain Test For The Day” story on Sunday about the introduction of weather routing as a new factor in scoring June 2024’s biennial CCA Newport-Bermuda Race was posted in wonderment (and maybe bewilderment) as much as being the airing of some interesting news, and already - on many waterfronts - it is being referred to as the WTF Factor.
Be that as it may, the Offshore Racing Council, through their Communications Officer Dobbs Davis (he attended the ICRA Annual Conference in Limerick in March 2017) thinks otherwise about the Bermuda Race’s claims to primacy, and pulls no punches in saying so. To give some background to his assertions, we will follow his comments with an outline of the worldwide rating situation as we see it.
DID ORC’S TECHNICAL COMMITTEE LEAD THE WAY?
We read with interest your review of the Newport-Bermuda Race announcement about using weather routing to score their race in 2024
Thanks for not reproducing the Race Chair's claim that "we are proud to be the first to bring this innovative scoring method to the offshore racing community," because this claim is erroneous.
For the past year, the ORC's International Technical Committee has been working diligently on this same project and will be using it for all offshore races in the 2024 ORC World and European Championship calendar, starting with the ORC Double-Handed European Championship in Caorle, Italy held over 30 April - 5 May 2024...a full month ahead of the NBR.
And for the past year the ORC team led by Chairman Andy Claughton has developed the method, vetted it by shadow scoring other races in EUR and the USA, and are in the process of refining it for more general use in the 2025 season.
A full description of Weather Routing Scoring (WRS) can be found on the ORC website at this link: https://orc.org/sailors/news-archive/orc-weather-routing-scoring.
Perhaps your EUR readers will want to know this innovation has been developed and will be used closer to home.
Dobbs Davis
ORC Communication Director
Dobbs Davis – a highly experienced and successful offshore racer himself - has been promoting and developing the “totally transparent” Offshore Racing Rule for many years.
DIFFERENT OFFSHORE RATING RULES
For those of us who remember the extremely hard work put in by leading designers and technical experts from both sides of the world in 1968-1970 to create the International Offshore Rule from the best of the established RORC and Cruising Club of America Rules, it was a bit distressing that international offshore racer design developed so fast that the simpler Channel Handicap System – later the IRC – had to develop in some cases to by-pass increasing IOR complexities, and Performance Handicap Systems developed in others, with the IOR eventually just part of a historical progression.
Our sadness stemmed from the fact that designers of the calibre of Olin Stephens and Jim McCurdy had created superb all-round yachts such as the Swan 40 (Stephens) and the 48ft Carina (McCurdy) to be their flagships in promoting the IOR, yet soon the pin-tailed designs of Doug Peterson and Ron Holland, together with unsightly “boats with bumps” to exploit the IOR’s hull measurement stations, were making it a struggle for those elegant fair-hulled classics to remain competitive, though, in the 1968-alloy-built Carina’s case, a skilled keel and rudder update in 1978 by Scotty Kauffman kept her very much at the races.
The 48ft Carina (Rives Potts) originally had a conservative fin and skeg profile when designed by Jim McCurdy for Dick Nye and his son in 1968. But in 1978 they had Scott Kauffman change it with this more radical profile, which included the new vertical spade rudder with an exemplary end-plate effect under the counter to maximize its effectiveness. Despite her “comfortably heavy” canoe body, the handsome alloy-built Carina remains competitive. Photo: Rives Potts
Now we have the IRC (administered by the RORC Rating Office), which is prevalent in Western Europe (other than the Baltic) and Australia & New Zealand, as well as other locations, while the Offshore Racing Rule administered by the ORC is campaigning to expand elsewhere, and into IRC territory as well.
Thus we have the annual ORC World Championship (it was held in Kiel on Germany’s Baltic Coast in 2023, with Karl Kwok’s TP52 Beau Geste from Hong Kong the winner, with German-owned TP 52s in second and third), while in 2024 we know we’re looking forward to the IRC European Championship at the Royal Irish Yacht Club in combination with the Royal Ocean Racing Club on Dublin Bay from September 10th to 15th 2024, with majors such as the RORC Caribbean 600, the Fastnet Race, the Round Ireland Race and the Sydney-Hobart also continuing to use the IRC.
But for now, with the longest nights of the winter upon us, the time is appropriate for the eternal handicap debate to be open to all sorts of discussional permutations.
