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The Offshore Racing Congress – ORC to you – runs several annual championships for ORC classes (always at European venues). These now attract large entries and many professional teams – especially in the Med – racing a good range of offshore designs, with the biggest boats in Class A in the 42-52ft range. Modern offshore yachts racing for an ‘offshore’ championship, yet the longest race runs for no more than 35 hours. The biggest growth elsewhere, in IRC in particular, is today found in offshore events – empowered by the growth in Corinthian shorthanded racing. The Med boys will take a lot of convincing… elsewhere a move further out to sea for the ORC may be surprisingly popular
hinted they want to have an inshore race followed by a short coastal race starting the same afternoon, to test a broader range of skillsets on the same day. And even though the USA has yet to host an ORC championship since the IMS Worlds in 2000, there is a similar growing preference here for more offshore and coastal racing. Yet in the Med cultures there is no such expressed preference! Racing in southern Europe is targeted very firmly at windward/ leeward sailing and yachts (and crews) are optimised accordingly. And this is a powerful lobby – the rating offices in Italy, Spain and Greece issue around 40 per cent of the world total of ORC certifi- cates, yet none has submitted any proposal to reconsider formats. Despite this, ORC has not completely abandoned support for offshore racing (sic): the recent advent of an ORC Double Handed championship, to coincide with the Gotland Runt, saw 91 two- handed teams registered. Next year’s big Double Handed ORC event will be in Barcelona, where a good turnout is expected, and the next Aegean 600 may include a double-handed division for a European title, though probably with a shortened course… Going further in the shorthanded direction, a Spanish submission has asked to have declared crew weights for ORC DH reduced from the default figure of 170kg to accommodate singlehanders – now increasing in numbers in the region.
All these discussions will test the flexibility of ORC to meet the needs and expectations of a changing community… and perhaps even return a little more ‘Offshore’ to an organisation that calls itself the Offshore Racing Congress. Dobbs Davis
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