MAX RANCHI


ORC Development – one year on


Asked by the editor for an update on ORC-driven design development I started with a list of arguments for and against recent trends and the ways in which the 2017 rule is steering optimisations. First we need to look at boat trends during recent years, also accounting for the feedback from those who sail the boats! It is immediately evident that one of the most important drivers


of performance vs rating remains the weather. One might say that is obvious, since we are speaking about sailing boats, but if you then add the complications of rating systems with their various allowances things become a bit more difficult to analyse because different boat types respond so differently to changing wind strength. In the past two or three years the main ORC championships have


all taken place in mid-summer and in light to medium conditions, or even, like Trieste this year, very light conditions. Such conditions reward boats with appropriate higher sail area/wetted surface and sail area/displacement ratios, especially upwind, fast out of the start and ready for the first shift. Add to this that while all rating rules require some trade-off between length, displacement and sail area, there is another consideration under ORC with fleets now divided according to a factor called class division length (CDL). Pre- viously ORC fleets were split by general purpose handicap (GPH), a time-on-distance version of IRC’s TCC – that is time on time.


GP42 or even Soto 40 are favourite, though still challenged by classic shapes like the Swan 45 which are fast and high upwind, especially in light to medium conditions. The 2017 Class A Worlds was won by the Cookson 50 Mascal-


zone Latino, not really a light-air design, after a hard battle against the TP52 Freccia Rossa (ex-Enfant Terrible), a 2008 Vrolijk design that has been upgraded each year. There were also some more modern racer-cruisers like Felci’s Scuderia 50 in the mix this year. Mascalzone’s main focus for 2017 is the big IRC offshore classics


like Hong Kong-Vietnam and Sydney Hobart, so for ORC races in Europe we had little scope for big changes apart from finessing sail measurements, optimising keel cant angles and playing a little bit with crew weight. There were also some small refinements to minimise rating penalties and gain a bit more agility in light air. Having fewer Class A boats (17) on the line this year helped in the search for clear air but Mascalzone’s crew deserve praise for driving a heavier, less canvassed boat to victory. In Poland at the ORC Europeans Swan 45s took the top two


places in Class A with a lighter Soto 40 third; as boat size reduces so heavier boats come to the fore so this was an excellent result by the lighter Acebal-designed Soto. What we have seen during past years working on ‘fast boat’ optimisations – ie the TP52, HH42 or GP42 – is that it often makes little or no sense to slow them down adding weight or reducing sail area. These modern boats are fundamentally less draggy and to make them surf later with less power or enhanced resistance is not always rewarded in rating. On the contrary, trying to improve performance, of


course taking into account rating rule idiosyncrasies and maybe working to make these sophisticated boats more crew friendly, for example with more forgiving appendages, can pay the biggest dividends. In ORC B traditional boats like the many optimised


X-41s and Swan 42s are still sweeping the board, with the lighter modern hulls continuing to struggle. Upwind speed remains king; unlike the search for speed in Class A, in Class B relatively heavy X-41s will often trade off a little light-air speed by adding displacement and reducing sail area for a better all-round rating. The dominance of these ‘slower’ boats is often near


Class A world champion Mascalzone trickles downwind in Trieste alongside Class C champion Airis. Veterans of Adriatic and Mediterranean regattas are very used to well-sailed small boats out-accelerating and sailing around larger, less nimble rivals. However, the author’s VPP simulations indicate this little but heavily modified Melges 32 will remain competitive up-range when its superior offwind speed will frequently outweigh the upwind deficit against ‘old’ designs


The GPH is calculated with a higher percentage of downwind


sailing so it was once possible to ‘downgrade’ older 40-footers in among the fleets of 34 to 37-footers by using smaller spinnakers and adding ballast. One of the best proponents of this was Pedro Campos’s highly optimised Sinergia 40 Movistar that for many years dominated the Copa del Rey as if by right. In Palma’s thermal breeze these hull types could exploit all their upwind potential with generous sailing length but still be fast enough downwind to defend the advan- tage and stay in clear air among their smaller, lighter rivals. To address this, ORC introduced CDL, which is a measure of


upwind speed in medium conditions. CDL is not used for calculating handicaps but it works well in setting better fleet splits. Let’s have a deeper look at recent ORC results in each division.


What we first see is that very different boats can now win a champion - ship but results remain strongly influenced by the prevailing conditions. However, other trends can be identified… In big boat Class A, lighter semi-planing boats like the TP52,


26 SEAHORSE


total; at this year’s ORC Europeans in Gdansk X-41s took the top seven places overall with the exception of a Corinthian Swan 42 in 6th. These boats had various optimisations, but mainly involving cutting mainsail area and adding lead in the bilge (some of the X-41s also invested in new appendages). At the worlds in Trieste the Class B winner was Be


Wild, a Swan 42 in standard class configuration, 2nd was Selene, also a Swan 42, but carefully optimised to be at the upper Class B limit. For Selene we had


worked on weight, righting moment, keel and bulb dimensions and location to have the fastest boat on the water, also increasing main- sail size and taking a small rating penalty compared with Be Wild. Also for Trieste we tried a different, more radical option for Nube,


a Croatian X-41 that led the event up to the last day and eventually finished 4th. Having studied in detail the VPPs for slightly heavier rivals like the Swan 42, earlier this year we took the unusual step – made less risky by the expected light conditions in Trieste – of trialling this X-41 with an experimental gennaker/bowsprit set-up. We stuck with it and continued development, and by the time the boat came to Trieste in the light airs we experienced the configuration was completely competitive. Nevertheless, during this year we have also seen that purpose-


designed light Class B entries like the Mat 11.80, Jason Ker’s Bolt 37 and our own 37-footer Mercedes AMG continue to struggle in upwind/downwind races where there are few possibilities against the bigger, more powerful boats.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88