Photo credit: Jo Richards.
And it all has to slide in and out flawlessly... Another ‘new’ design to keep rule managers up at night is Jo Richards’ race-winning bilge-keeler Eeyore. Like the una rig, no one previously has leant on the IRC (or ORC) rule with a modern interpretation of twin keels. Maybe this is the start? Depends on the response this winter...
the way through day racers, up to the just launched 142ft Canovabuilt at Baltic Yachts. For rating man- agers the treatment of these developments has been an interesting process, steadily progressing from the early ‘think of a number’ approach to today’s more sci- entifically rigorous analysis that attempts to fairly sort out the effects over the racetracks. Having the 46ft Maverick– currently on a global
tour of classic offshore races – we’ve been fortunate to have seen first-hand how well the IRC, ORC, and ORR rules handle this particular DSS-equipped race- boat. (As a note on the design: the owner of Maverick had a very specific design brief in wanting to keep crew numbers down and usually races with seven or eight onboard as opposed to the 11 or 12 more typical on a boat of this length.) Maverick’s initial IRC rating from before the latest
rule workings was certainly unrealistically high, and although the boat could at times sail to the rating it did need a course that involved a very high proportion of favoured conditions when the foils could be utilised. Once the rule treatment became more rational we had a boat that could hold its own under pretty much any conditions, and class wins in a couple of Middle Sea Races under both IRC and ORC were a nice con- firmation that both systems were now equally capable of looking at foil-assisted boats. The Middle Sea Race is renowned for its full spectrum of conditions from drifters up through the Straits of Messina to often very heavy weather around the top of Sicily and back to Malta. So the boat itself had ticked its design boxes as well as those of both IRC and ORC. Moving over to the Pacific and yet another rating, this time under ORR, Maverickused the SoCal 300 (Santa Barbara to San Diego) as a practice race for the Transpac, again under a full range of conditions from a nice foiled reaching leg to dribbling up the last leg into San Diego, and just managed to take the over- all win. It is highly encouraging that three different rat- ing systems managed to come up with equitable hand- icaps for a configuration that is only in the early days of adoption across the sailing world.
The Imoca 60s obviously have their own exciting
developments here, but they are constrained by some surprisingly rigid class rules and type-forming courses that lead to less than optimal design solutions for wider relevance – quite apart from the excessive cost of the complex foil constructions currently employed. However, we’re not that far away from seeing full flying monohulls at all sizes – the Minis have done it, although how much of the time you can actually fly is a moot point – and this is going to be another inter- esting challenge for rating systems in the very near future.
The 60s could also easily fly now if they were
allowed T-foils on their rudders for attitude control, but elsewhere some pretty normal boats can be designed and built these days with full flight capability. The ques- tion is of course whether this is a desirable develop- ment or something that we should keep under careful control to a greater or lesser degree. Full flight brings its own problems: knowing what sort of sea state becomes the limiting factor; the need for automation of flight control systems and so on; plus the added stress of higher concentration levels required of the crew… Not to mention the increased stresses on the platform when everything goes wrong. Possibly the current 60s are in fact showing the way
for offshore monohull racing – not quite flying with all the drama that entails, but still dramatically pushing up average speeds. Racing in daylight and/or inshore is another matter, where courses can also be manipulated to suit more fragile types of full-foilers and allow them to demon- strate their complete potential. However it is packaged we should try to ensure that the sheer fun of flying at high speed across the water becomes open to all. Hugh Welbourn
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