IRC
An end to rule bandits
One of my early presents from Santa came via the editor, asking me for a piece for this issue on the overall results of the latest Sydney Hobart. I will be honest, if that was a precursor to what I was to expect under the tree, I had been a very naughty boy in 2017! I say that as it is always hard to review a race that you don’t know intimately, and where you don’t know many of the competitors well. Too often such reports end up being little more than a statistical
analysis and that doesn’t make interesting reading to the vast majority of us. And those who do find it interesting need to not draw detailed conclusions from the results, but remember that the only ones who know what happened on each boat, where things felt right and where things went wrong, are the crews who were there. That is yacht racing, it is one of the things that make it so compelling. Looking at IRC overall, I will start by congratulating Matt Allen
on a well-deserved win. I say that as I have known Matt’s sailing master (Gordon Maguire) for nearly 30 years and Matt for around 20 years. Both have shown great commitment to winning this race and focus in getting the job done – to them and their crew I know that this is a well-deserved win. The fact that it has taken so long and so much to get this win under their belts tells you a great deal about the rest of the competitors. The quality has to be bloody high if these guys have to work so hard for so long to get it. I will get the statistical analysis out of the way now as quickly
and painlessly as I can: as the editor requested… I began by looking at the comparison of IRC and ORCi results which in recent offshore races have been looking increasingly similar and in some cases identical. Sure enough, once I had got down to seventh place overall and was only seeing the same names, I decided that flogging that horse wouldn’t be a very good use of my – or indeed your – time. I then looked at the spread of boat types over the top end of the
overall IRC results. Many might say that seeing the first two places filled by TP52s was an example of TP52 dominance in IRC racing. But look further. Firstly, there were nine TP52s in the top 20.
That is a lot of one specific boat type in an event and an example of how productive the TP52 circuit has been in populating our race fleets all around the world. These nine included boats from as far
30 SEAHORSE
back as 2003, so embracing the full evolution of the class. Interestingly, though, the third-placed TP52 was in ninth place. We saw three of the top seven places filled by boats around 45ft,
from three different designers. Look wider and by the time the fourth TP52 appears there are boats from 10 different design houses, including four canting-keel designs and four production/series builds. The age range is interesting too, with the non-TPs also dating back to 2003. Considering that the top eight boats all had corrected times within
a two-hour window, does this tell you that the TP52 is a dominant class? As noted above, I think it mainly tells you that there are a lot of them out there racing; that shouldn’t be a surprise as a lot were built, all to the highest quality, and you aren’t going to buy one if you don’t want to race… and to race one well means you have invested a lot of time and money to perform as well as possible. Plus the boats are similar enough, even the older examples, that boat-on-boat racing and two-boat tuning are particularly effective. That said, what the latest Hobart results tell me is that the TP52
is a good boat, but not invincible. It also tells me that IRC is working well. You don’t need a specific design to do well, but you do need to try as hard or harder than the competition. There is nowhere to hide and if you don’t put in the work then IRC will not rescue you. Nor can you use it as an excuse. It also tells me that ORCi is
working well as the results were very similar across both systems. Again, I wonder at those who say that a rating rule, particularly a single number one, can’t cope with offshore racing. Some will say that racing under any rating rule is not a very pure
definition of a sport. But in reality, if we are seeing the best-prepared boats all in with a chance of the podium then things are working. I will be surprised if none of the top eight in this race cannot see somewhere they could have made gains, somewhere they could have improved on tactics or sail configuration. Using hindsight, I think we all see gains we could make every time we go racing. If we don’t then what is the point in going out there again? To me the latest Hobart race only emphasises the point that teams who concentrate their efforts into getting the best out of
INGRID ABERY
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