ORC
Late to the party (but encouraging)
Extremely light winds typified the ORC Worlds last year in Trieste. Being very much the characteristic conditions for the North Adriatic for the time of year, this was well anticipated by most of the teams and will have been the focus for much of their preparations. In our own case, for our newly launched Aquatich 40 design, the
worlds came around all too quickly with only two weeks to prepare the boat after it first went into the water. This was always going to be a tough ask for a new boat being sailed by a new team, but the event nevertheless provided an excellent platform from which to learn, observe and witness the level of preparation going into some of the top ORC campaigns. The opening coastal race provided a promising start to the regatta,
which then extended into a longer course that took the boats through Italian, Slovenian and Croatian waters. Sadly this was also char- acterised by frequent shut-downs and big wind shifts which caused the fleet to compress at various stages and in Class B ultimately favoured the slower, lower-rating boats. For the inshore series, with 49 boats competing in Class B, clean
starts and good upwind pace and height were paramount. With such short upwind legs (15-20 minutes on average) and so few clear lanes, there was very little opportunity in the light 5-7kt winds to make up for a poor start. In fact, across all the inshore races in Class B no fewer than 80 per cent of the top-10 boats rounding the first windward mark also went on to finish inside the top 10 on corrected time for that race. With the start proving so key to finishing position it was little surprise that the regatta saw no fewer than six general recalls, while race 3 had 10 boats black-flagged at the start – which sadly included our Aquatich 40! Despite the conditions being significantly lighter than the 12kt
used to determine the ORC’s Class Division Length (CDL), in Class B the results still ended up closely tied to that CDL with the top three places comprising two Club Swan 42s and a Cossutti-designed M45. These boats all occupy a similar position within the Class B
design space – big, relatively heavy designs, long on the waterline, but with generous upwind sail area to wetted area providing a key advantage on the water in such light winds in being able to squeeze
30 SEAHORSE
out ahead of the fleet on the first windward leg, as well as the obvious bonus that size combined with good upwind performance provides in being able to ‘boss’ such a crowded startline. By contrast, lighter-displacement designs featured strongly in
the equally large Class C fleet. This was perhaps aided by the fact that the larger, heavier-displacement designs in Class C were generally a little shorter on sail area relative to their wetted area and displacement in relation to their Class B counterparts. This seemed to offer more opportunity for the smaller, lighter boats to pop out with good starts, hold clear lanes upwind and stay in phase with the shifts, usually coming out towards the front end of the fleet at the weather mark. Of course, the landscape for both these classes will change
considerably given more breeze, where sailing length kicks in to a greater degree upwind, alongside sail area to displacement ratio, particularly downwind. Also, the greater sail-carrying power of some designs will move them to the fore in terms of upwind potential. This is more in line with where we targeted optimum performance
for the Aquatich 40 and was a little closer to the conditions expe- rienced at the Europeans in Gdansk. At 40ft our emphasis was always on creating a relatively fast boat for her length, to maintain position towards the front of a crowded Class B fleet, but also to provide a well-rounded performance profile suitable for a wide array of events and to deliver fast, fun and responsive sailing character- istics – while obviously playing within the constraints of what we found to be favourable under the ORC rule. With the ORC hydro model now decoupled from some of the para-
meters that in the past were typeforming towards some undesirable traits, there is more freedom than there was before to design fast and efficient hull forms within the target range of displacement, beam and so on. There are, however, still underlying sensitivities in the ORC system
to volume distribution, hull section shaping and how maximum beam is distributed along the yacht’s length (for instance). This cur- rently restricts the use of some of the latest hull form developments and shapes which are increasingly implemented with lighter designs
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