ORC
Responding to the market
The Offshore Classes and Events Committee of the ORC is one of the oldest in the organisation, which itself was founded over 50 years ago in a marriage of interests between RORC and CCA in the US. A little later in the era of the Ton Cups and great offshore team events (for example, the Admiral’s Cup, Kenwood and Sardinia Cups) it was this committee that set the standards and formats for competition at championship levels. Their annual published product is still known as the Green Book for its iconic colouring and ready use as a reference for the myriad details that both boat captains and race team managers had to know to ensure compliance and avoid costly and/or embarrassing protests. Another important role of the Green Book was and still is to
ensure that the standards and formats of these regattas meet the published criteria for championship events. Thanks to the diligent leadership of the late Paolo Massarini as chair of this committee for the past several years, this is still very much the case; so when an organisation wants the blessing of ORC to be approved to host a Continental or World fully crewed Championship, applications are often submitted, debated and approved years in advance. This has helped maintain the enduring value and interest in these events, which are routinely filled to capacity with as many as 100-150 entries from around the world. Today, in response to the strong and growing interest in double-
handed offshore racing, the Green Book is shifting to also encom- pass new criteria for organisations interested in hosting a Conti- nental ORC DH Championship; an ORC DH World Championship has yet to be approved by World Sailing and may take a while yet to wrangle through the political process! Massarini’s successor is, however, Bruno Finzi, who with many years’ experience as ORC chairman already has intimate knowledge of exactly this kind of
40 SEAHORSE
wrangling… he believes that getting some successful European or North American championships under the belt first will be needed before taking on that endeavour successfully. In the meantime the Green Book committee is going through the
effort of agreeing on formats and scoring while addressing key com- petitor issues like safety, outside communications and the use of autopilots. For instance, for the latter there has been considerable debate: ban them, limit their use, or open it up to anything. Different events around the globe currently make their own decisions on autopilot use but always at issue is the balance between safety, practicality and cost… not to mention the longterm good of sailing. Outgoing World Sailing Offshore and Oceanic committee chair
Stan Honey has, meanwhile, weighed in with some detailed suggestions of his own on defining the dos and don’ts…
Autopilot usage l Supplied equipment fleets: heading function only; supplied remote controls only; limit to only changing accessible menus; no changes permitted to firmware on the pilot. Similarly no changes to firmware on the instruments. l Bring your own boat fleets: probably OK to not have limit on autopilot functionality and permit all modes including optimum wind angle from polars. (This of course is nothing new; my own pilot has been doing this since 1992 and I think all commercial pilots can now similarly interface to the instrument systems). Remote controls permitted.
Communications l Supplied equipment fleets: consider limiting weather data to scheduled public VHF voice forecasts. Race organisers might
RICK TOMLINSON
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