The huge drag advantage of a quad over a triangular headsail on this point of sail is clearly demonstrated in these two shots of a DSS 36 (inset) and Wild Oats, where the draggy return from the big Oats genoa also demands the mainsail is sheeted much harder. Of course, J Class sailors grasped this 80 years ago (issue 456) – for her 1937 defence Ranger employed a full inventory of quads
Square peg round hole
Or why allowing inflexible rating systems to dictate we use old technology to power our new-generation boats is a very dumb idea
It used to take a major shift in materials technology to engender a wholesale change in the rating rules. Thus IOR came about from the RORC rule, but evolved – as a totally prescriptive rule – until better understanding and usage of materials made the basic tenets of the rule no longer fit for purpose. A relatively simple rule could have adapted to the changes taking place but failed to do so and disappeared. Within its time, though, IOR produced some great racing with the biggest fleets of offshore raceboats we have ever seen. Another prescriptive rule came along
with IMS, and that too headed down the same path until near extinction. This time, though, the technical driver was the inher- ent weakness of a mathematical analysis system that could be, and rapidly was, exploited to produce some truly awful designs. Once again another rule had foundered on the rigidity of its workings and the inability – usually political – to adapt to, let alone anticipate, change. Today IRC (and formerly CHS) treads a
middle ground in that it tries to make good sense out of the more general design fea- tures, keeps the real maths of the rule under a blanket of secrecy and on the whole has done a pretty good job of rating a diverse range of yachts. ORC has mel- lowed to a degree from its IMS origins and is also now doing a fair job of analysing performance with a more accommodating brush than was originally the case. However, with age all rules tend to
become reactive to change, rather than proactive, with arguments over develop- mental
freedoms inevitably revolving
around protecting the existing fleet. Too often, as we know, this comes at the cost of stifling developments that should be encouraged. So where are we today? In loose terms
composite materials and build techniques have reached a plateau in terms of mini- mum practical construction weights; but this plateau has not come with any let-up in cost inflation. The choice of build mate- rials is now effectively binary, between carbon and glass; under either IRC or ORC you can have two primary baseline types of boat that will have pretty well- established weights and hence one should be able to make a good fist of the perfor- mance/rating comparison. There is, though, a perceived problem
where middle-of-the-road production boats are given a bit more benefit in rating terms
than seems appropriate. This is true under both IRC and ORC so changing rating sys- tem will not help you. This bias is normally down to the internal maths encouraging a certain set of characteristics to shield that ‘existing fleet’. Whatever the reasons, this undoubtedly tilts the playing field, disen- franchising owners who would rather have a bit more fun racing faster modern boats. Thus we presently see performance-
biased breakaways such as the TP52s and lately the Fast40s forming their own individ- ual classes and not wanting to play with the majority of the fleet, except on special occa- sions like the Giraglia or the UK’s Round the Island Race. They have also developed into a dayboat racer style and so are even further removed from the majority of the fleet that can and do take part in offshore races, not to mention a bit of occasional cruising on the side. (The weakness of these breakaway classes as they develop within their own framework is that they in their own turn may become ever more prescriptive and unable – or unwilling – to adapt to the future before it overtakes them.) So today we have a fragmentation of
fleets, into the high-performance boat groups which are tending toward partial box rules while encompassing IRC as their base rating model, and the genuine club racing boats which form the backbone of every fleet in the world. One obvious question is whether such a
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CARLO BORLENGHI
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