Man of many parts… family of many parts. While 18ft skiff and everything else sailor Sean Langman was busy at the front racing his Reichel/Pugh 69 Moneypenny to Hobart (opposite) taking first in IRC Division 0 and ninth overall, his son Peter was busy astern plugging down the track on Maluka (left) to win IRC Division 5. The family’s little 90-year-old gaff cutter will shortly be going on a ship to England in order to compete in this year’s Fastnet Race
example, it’s naive to think sailing performance can be modelled without having a measurement of each boat’s righting moment. I make no apology for this complexity. We all operate complex tools day in day out: cars, mobile phones, computers, espresso machines. The enemy is not complexity, this should be behind the scenes – the enemy is complication. Why do I need two remotes to turn on my TV and sound bar?
Unfortunately ORC measurement, and race scoring, can get complicated very quickly, yet it doesn’t have to; but there is no doubt that a few bad experiences quickly obscure the good things that ORC offers. But we know this and from now on it is as important that we apply our group experience not just to the VPP but to the user experience. We can and must improve this. SH: And scoring… AC: The position with race scoring is a bit different. It’s not complex but it has certainly become awfully complicated – the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Again looking ahead we are aiming – in particular – to address the following situation… Imagine a Farr 40 racing a Class40. Upwind in the light the Farr 40 would climb away, downwind in 20kt the Class40 would be up and gone. A single number can only deliver equitable scoring if the
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boats race all season in a variety of conditions; some days are Farr days, some are Class40 days, and so it evens out. This is how things started out with the RORC rule and CCA rules. Yet in the 1970s US Sailing opened Pandora’s box and began research to score races based on predicted boat speeds, the actual wind speed and the points of sail encountered on the course; the goal was to use science to more equitably rate boats in any con- ditions. In 2023 the ORC are guardians of this faith and 50-odd years later we like to think we now have the tools to deliver it to those who want it. SH: And making it work in real life… AC:Strangely the boat speed predictions are the easy bit. The difficult part is how to decide what conditions the boats have raced in. Post-race Polar Curve Scoring uses the boats’ times around the course, the course geometry and an observed wind direction – to intuit what the wind speed must have been for the boats to match their recorded elapsed time. But even writing this sentence makes my head hurt!
It’s hard to get your head around this concept, but a great many competitors manage this on a weekly basis and are happy with the approach. To get the wind speed you must sail the course, and because the relative handicaps change with wind speed the placings are only finally confirmed once the race is completed. But this makes getting your ‘live’ position during the race, well, complicated – it’s like Schrodinger’s Podium, you don’t know exactly how you were doing until after you’ve done it. And for new fleets not brought up with the necessary psychological mechanisms to deal with this level of uncertainty, it is frequently too big a change in mindset. But we’ll get there one day… Dobbs Davis
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