The boat is rated for its largest headsail (sail number 1). Sails (2) and (3) can be flown without any effect on her IRC rating. Also you can fly a gennaker along with the three headsails seen here without any penalty ... if you think it will work
2 1 3
It is not, however, a simple thing to set up on the boat, nor to
trim efficiently especially for a Corinthian crew who will probably lack the time to put in the many hours on the water to refine the technique compared with their professional rivals. For a start you need a sturdy bowsprit, something that less than
half the last Hobart fleet carried. Also you need the halyards and winches to hoist and sheet all these sails. Finally, because the forward flying headsail is set on long head and tack strops, the sail naturally deflects the luff wire a long way to leeward and needs modifications to the rigging to support the increased runner loads needed to maintain performance. Not all the competitors in the Hobart had the ability to set up
Top: a typical TP52 sail wardrobe taken from its ORCi certificate. The sails are categorised by how they are flown. ‘Not flying’ are hoisted on the headstay; the BR0 is an ‘Headsail Set Flying’ from the bowsprit. Sails designated ‘Inner’ are conventional genoas along with any spinnaker staysails flown in the traditional way. Above: free clicks for triple-headsail sailing; pricey but efficient
de-facto set-up. Any time the true wind is between 50 and 110° three sails are hoisted for maximum boat speed. Also this set-up pulls the sailplan centre of effort way forward, the weather helm is much reduced and the boat now runs on rails. There is nothing not to like about this set-up. Now to return to our concept of clicks, we have discussed bonus
clicks, conditions where your actual speed is higher than your APH TCF, and penalty clicks where it is lower. Flying multiple headsails when only one is rated gives you ‘free’ clicks. Any time you can get three sails up there are free clicks on offer… and conversely there are no penalty clicks that kick in when you have to go back to a single headsail. You just get back to where you should be. Contrary to the current ORR/IRC system the ORC VPP is pro-
grammed to predict the performance of double and triple-head rigs and can give us an idea of how many free clicks the triple-head rig may offer. The figure above shows where the free clicks come into play compared to the same boat using only its single largest head- sail. These are gathered in the close-reaching quadrant, 40, 50 maybe as many as 60 free clicks. Which is huge… If you can set up your boat to triple-head it’s a very tasty free lunch in racing terms.
40 SEAHORSE
for triple-head sailing. In fact, those who could do it were very much in the minority. So is this situation fair, both in terms of access and simple cost – more sails, more equipment (and probably a more expensive crew to make it all work)? No surprise then that in the Hobart IRC class the fully pro TP52s took most of the top 10 places. The RORC technical team managing IRC know this is a problem,
and steps are already in the pipeline to address it, gradually, starting from January 2024 onwards. (We are not aware of similar steps being planned for the ORR system in the USA). The ORC also know how big the problem is, thanks to data output
of the current VPP, and have taken steps to maintain handicap equity for boats who cannot sail triple-headed. The ORC handicaps for monohulls, superyachts and multihulls acknowledge the use of multiple headsails and the scoring polar tables are already calculated accordingly. In the ORC VPP ‘flying sails’ attract a minimum effective area if
flown from the sprit and hoisted above the forestay tang, on the implicit understanding that other sails will be set further aft on the forestay – as would a staysail. So we rate something more like the effective area. This is where the anomaly arose in the last Hobart, the overall race winner Celestial (scored under IRC) withdrawing from the ORC class due to the use of a complex multiple headsail set-up that had not been submitted for ORC measurement. However, no rule can currently predict the effect of the CE moving
forward. As always the solution is a work in progress, as ORC follows its mission to rate what owners bring to the startline. But if you’re heading offshore look at your certificate and look behind the TCF for where the bonus clicks and the penalty clicks might be, and where your opponents’ free clicks might similarly be lurking! I think even Mrs Claughton would baulk at this situation… Andy Claughton, ORC technical committee chair
q
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 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124
