‘You win the Admiral’s Cup by putting three boats in the top 10 or 12 places in every race. You do that by not breaking anything, by not doing anything stupid and by staying outside the protest room,’ said New Zealand coach Rod Davis after his team won the 1987 edition. A young Peter Lester and Brad Butterworth (front left and right) flank the gold trophy – which here seems to have lost its lid
that we have two systems ultimately preventing sailors with similar boats from competing with one another.
fewer sailors will remember what it was all about. Previous valiant attempts at revival unfortunately coincided with the start of the financial crisis, so there is a natural reluctance to try again unless there is a fairly certain chance of success. RW: Your mission to join forces with the ORC culminated in that press release of November 2010: ‘The RORC and Union Nationale pour La Course au Large (UNCL), joint owners of IRC, have been in discussion with the ORC about the possibility of creating a unified organisa- tion to govern yacht ratings worldwide.’ Already endorsed by ISAF, the intention was for RORC/UNCL and ORC to create a joint venture to run IRC and ORC and then, in time, combine resources to evolve a new rule with the best bits of both to create fast, fun and seaworthy boats for unified competition all over the world. At the time ORC chairman Bruno Finzi and vice-chairman Wolfgang Schaefer were also enthusiastic about working with the RORC. I can only ask: what went wrong? AM: I remain hopelessly optimistic about trying to get the world to agree on one system for rating offshore boats for inter- national competition – and I have not quite given up yet. What went wrong was the relative intransigence of two sides with rather different objectives, plus a lack of transparency. I don’t want to scupper what I hope will be on going negotiations, but there are certain facts that need to be addressed for a resolution to be reached: 1) The successful boats in both systems are now the same. In races where dual-scoring is used (ie Middle Sea and Hobart) there is virtually no difference in the results. 2) The evolution of both systems has provided similar end results. How we got there is now immaterial and we need to bury all the bad feeling from when the old IMS rule generated pretty terrible boats. In fact, the end of the IOR also produced
44 SEAHORSE
some strange results. We now have a generation of superb craft that are faster and safer than ever before. We need to capitalise on this and all be racing together. But there are two major barriers to amalgamation: 1) A theoretical lack of transparency of IRC compared with ORC – however, it is not true that ORC is totally transparent and IRC is totally not. Most designers have now worked out the IRC formulae to the extent that the previous fear that total transparency would break the rule is not necessarily true. 2) The other barrier is financial and political. IRC is owned and managed jointly by RORC and UNCL and financial benefits pass to those two clubs. ORC is funded by their rating system but has no other responsibilities aside from that. In theory neither of those barriers is insuperable, but the continuing attitude of competition rather than co-operation between the two systems and the exercise of not entirely factual public relations have not been conducive to progress. RW: I think the ‘battle’ between ORC and IRC is ridiculous. It often seems more important than yacht racing itself. You and Wolfgang [Schaefer], despite the posi- tions you had in your organisations, never rallied enough internal support – that became increasingly obvious from outside. Everyone involved needs to stop hiding behind the convenient theory that it is better to have the two main rating systems in competition, keeping both sharp. I know for a fact that the perceived culture clash demotivates owners and sailors. Perhaps first we should direct some energy towards a proper analysis of how the rating of yachts can be structured to flow seamlessly up from local competition to the top of the tree? AM: I agree with you entirely. In a shrink- ing area of the sport it is absolutely absurd
Although it has a rather Anglo-Saxon bias, it is fair to say that today the biggest international offshore competitions are based on IRC. The only exception is the Newport-Bermuda Race which uses ORR. The major trophies in the Fastnet, Sydney- Hobart, Middle Sea Race, Rolex China Sea Race, RORC Caribbean 600, IMA Volcano Race etc are all awarded to IRC- rated boats. As a start I’d like to see a sort of joint IRC/ORC World Championship. If and when we can get the proposed Universal Measurement System to work then it will be much easier to rate boats in both systems. It should then be possible to achieve further streamlining. I have great confidence that the new chairman of the ISAF offshore committee, Stan Honey, will help with this. He has the great advantage of unsurpassable offshore experience and commands huge respect from all involved. RW: Was the idea of a joint IRC/ORC Worlds not floated at the recent ISAF con- ference in Sanya? I quote: ‘A working party was created between the ORC and IRC con- gress with ISAF support to plan for a joint ORC/IRC World Championship in 2018.’ The innocent reader might guess that we will therefore have a new rating system for ‘the’ corrected-time world championship… but I guess a more realistic first step would be to combine IRC and ORC scoring for one serious trophy rather than the overall title? AM:You are quite right. I have just returned from China and I am hopeful that we have put co-operation back on track. As you may imagine, this took days of ‘behind-the- scenes’ discussion because there was already a submission on the table for IRC to have the equivalent right as ORC to hold a sepa- rate IRC Worlds. However, a final agree- ment was reached to hold a joint worlds. Rather than demand a joint rule by that time and come to another impasse, more likely is that we shall aim to come up with a formula to score jointly using existing data. Our great hope is that this first combined event provides a stepping stone to unification in the long term. But for that we will need to bridge the philosophical gap between those who prefer relatively complex measurement, VPP and scoring system, such as ORCi, and those who prefer the more pragmatic approach of IRC or ORC Club.
In general designers prefer the former, owners the latter. But central to any solution will be the level of transparency of the VPP that is used and, more impor- tantly, its type forming consequences. q
JONATHAN EASTLAND/DPPI
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