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Rob Weiland Not so chilled in Barcelona


World Sailing’s recently launched new branding and strategic positioning, ‘Sailing – Sport, Nature and Technology in perfect harmony’, was very visible at November’s annual meetings held in Barcelona. Not just in the branding but also in some of the items on the agenda, like the Sustainability Forum and Commercial Strategy,


with presentations by well-known speakers like Mark Turner. Dreaming about sustainability is not without risk, I found out. In Barcelona I woke up out of a nightmare that I clearly recall as sitting all tied up in an electric chair that at its foot end had a bicycle crank and pedals connected to a generator to pedal enough power together to kill myself… The choice was to pedal fast to keep the suffering short or to pedal slow for a little longer but certainly painful life. Sustainability can do weird things to the human mind. World Sailing is currently made up of 141 Member National Authorities (MNAs), who are its principal members and are respon- sible for the decision-making process that governs sailing. There are close to 110 official international classes. Quite aston- ishing is that over the past nine years those classes contributed £2,385,314 to WS and the MNAs paid £1,796,827; but that each MNA has a vote at the general assembly and the classes (whose builders or members additionally pay substantial new boat fees) have no vote. The classes have only one vote at the council from a total of 41, of which 36 represent MNA groups. I always thought it right to support World Sailing and each year gladly send in the TP52 contribution and new boat fees but I feel the classes need to look a little deeper at how exactly what we pay relates to the influence we have. One would think that the World Sailing Offshore and Oceanic Committee, besides the classes committee, presents a good platform to represent the interest of offshore sailing, but it is a little more complicated than that as many of its members represent at least two separate sailing-related interests.


Some of the terms of reference of this committee are pretty special. What to think of: promote dual-purpose cruiser/racer boats in competition? Single-purpose racers are not mentioned… For sure a minority – but not to be mentioned at all? Interesting also: set criteria for designation as international or recognised rating systems and monitor the activities of all elements of oceanic and offshore racing, conducted in one-design or level rating classes of boats, as well as under handicap or rating systems, and report to council making any appropriate recommendations. With so much emphasis on the rating systems we get close to


the potential conflicts of interest that became unpleasantly obvious in Barcelona. A substantial number of offshore committee members are also ORC committee members and a far lesser number RORC related. Not that they sit on the offshore committee in that capac- ity… most are there to represent their country’s federation. Appar- ently transparency, supposedly a key criterion for rating rules, ceases to be a concern when it comes to the politics of these rules? With the chairman and two deputy chairmen of the ORC management committee and four other ORC committee members represented on the oceanic and offshore committee, how can you expect an open and fair debate on the RORC’s submission to grant IRC a world championship title?


If it had not been for the brave leadership of committee chairman Stan Honey – and perhaps the respect the members have for him – then World Sailing’s oceanic and offshore committee would have disgraced itself beyond hope of redemption for a very long time. For those present at the meeting the debate can only be described as ‘ugly’ – even though the chairman kept members on a short leash. But how on earth can anyone defend not granting nearly 7,000 IRC certificate holders the right to hold an annual world championship given that there are something like 250 sailing world championships every year… with most based upon far fewer certificate holders? That many did just that is to no one’s credit. The two rating giants fighting each other, ultimately over the back of their clients and potential clients, has a long history. ORC dates back to 1969 and was founded as a result of the IYRU (later ISAF, now World Sailing) asking the CCA (Cruising Club of America) and RORC to create one international rule, IOR. It was thought this could lead to having an offshore class in the Olympics. Optimising for IOR eventually led to type forming; in its turn unhappiness with this type forming, coupled with nationalist reasons, led to the creation of MHS, later renamed IMS, with the intention of treating traditional yachts more fairly. Keep dreaming, of course. Also IMS as any rating system was type forming. Slowly IMS took over from IOR as boat owners in the end have the final say in these matters and IOR was over time mismanaged to produce slow, tender, expensive boats. IMS, however, from the start was not taken onboard in the UK. There a local system, Channel Handicap (later IRC), developed since 1984 in partnership with the French UNCL, with its simplicity and for sure also for reasons of nationalist sentiment, was preferred. With this development the original partners in ORC drifted apart and never really got together again. Channel Handicap developed into IRC (since 1997 and ISAF recognised in 2003) and over the years into the preferred rating system worldwide for owners looking to build one-off racers, certainly above 45ft LOA. IRC was of course never intended for this but somehow copes remarkably well with the challenges of rating the crème de la crème to this day. At some cost, however, hardly avoidable, of pleasing the traditional cruiser racers. Thus opening up to seeing some of its traditional clients move to ORC. There simply are fewer sports cars than family saloons.


It all got extremely messy, if not verbally violent, once it was


The rig goes into the new Botín-designed Maxi72 Cannonball in Dubai. Though there are plenty of hydraulics on view the march of progress means there is actually considerably less than would have been found on a 1980s IOR Maxi. Nice, meaty keel bolts…


28 SEAHORSE


agreed to merge ORC with ISAF in 1997 (the merger ended in 2002). Bob Fisher wrote about the 2001 ISAF AGM in Lisbon – where ORC was supposed to support dissolving into the ISAF offshore com- mittee (it did not happen, but ORC did lose control of the Offshore Special Regulations): ‘The upcoming ISAF conference will provide students of politics with a festival of high drama, with blood on the carpet at the Hotel Altis, and Lady Macbeth slipping away into the shadows while the wicked witches dance around the cocktail bar.’ There the seeds were planted by ORC chairman Hans Zuiderbaan for what by now is a solid tree of contention, when he proposed to establish an International Handicap Rule/System sub-committee to oversee the administration of each system and to review rule changes that ‘will affect the initial character or viability of the submitted rule’. This of course invited considerable opposition from RORC/UNCL to protect the ‘secret heart’ of IRC.


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