Proper little yacht – the Andrews-designed MORC racer Details was built by Dennis Choate in the early 1980s. She is seen (opposite) in current form with a cutaway transom and lighter cockpit, and with her previous ‘big boat’ stern (left). Details is at the heavy, lots of sail area end of the MORC spectrum, going best in light to moderate airs. Bill Lee’s brilliant little Santa Cruz 27 (below) offered another way to go MORC racing – much lighter, less sail and absolutely launched downwind in anything more than a zephyr. When they appeared in 1974 a new Santa Cruz 27 could have been yours for US$8,950. A few years later and Details, considered modest for a one-off MORC racer, would have set you back at least US$90,000
deep winter further north – towing being much more manageable at this size. MORC rules found productive use even
beyond the club’s own races. For the 1994 Canada’s Cup, the oldest yachting trophy in the Great Lakes, the Royal Canadian YC in Toronto challenged the Bayview YC in Detroit with an official challenge to be raced in 30ft MORC designs. After an exciting summer of elimination trials on both defence and challenger sides it was the Nelson-Marek MORC 30 Champion Eagle that successfully defended the trophy against the Canadian challenger, the Brendan Dobroth-designed Absolut. To extend MORC’s relevance to modern
fleets it was decided a few years later in 1998 to extend the upper size limit to just under 34ft, which allowed in boats like J/105s and Farr 30s and gave the fleet and the ‘club’ a welcome new lease of life.
Designer battleground While there are numerous competitive MORC designs that were production or series-built from the 1970s to the 1990s, there are also numerous US designers who got their start with clients seeking competi- tive custom MORC boats. Design careers launched in MORC
dozens of Stations throughout the US – including locations on all the Great Lakes, the Chesapeake, southern California, Charleston and Palm Beach, to name a few. As for the MORC Measurement Rule, it
was tailored to rate a narrow size range of yachts; it has been well-described as a modified version of the CCA rule which ruled the roost in the US until the late 1960s when it was merged with the RORC rule, to form the new IOR rule in 1969, administered by the newly formed Off- shore Racing Congress (ORC). According to the official background
information published by MORC, its handicap rule was ‘designed to be simple, economical and easy to measure and enforce. Its goal is to equate speed-produc- ing factors without prohibiting develop- ment, while minimising design obsoles- cence and at the same time of encouraging the development of useful cruising yachts.’ Not sure how that principle in the last
phrase could apply fully to the 16ft Bullseye, reckoned to be the first boat designed and
built to the MORC rule, but the nature of what were accepted as ‘cruising yachts’ was probably different in those days… That said, it is an unusual circumstance
where a rating rule system is part of a club that may organise and hold its own regattas using its own system (eg RORC Rating that issues IRC certificates is a different entity from RORC itself) – but this is what MORC did for many years starting in the 1970s. Without playing politics with higher authorities like ISAF or US Sailing MORC carried on every year with manag- ing the details of measurements, issuing certificates and organising regional events, called ‘international championships’, and all without having to beg for approval from anyone beyond their own organisation. For several decades hundreds of MORC
boats enjoyed great class racing from the 1970s through to the turn of the century. Events like the MORC Midwinters, organ- ised yearly since 1988 in Tampa Bay by MORC Station 10, kept the class active among those seeking a break from the
include Mark Soverel in Florida, Rod Johnstone and Bob Evelyn in New Eng- land, Alan Andrews in southern California, and Graham & Schlageter in the midwest. Working the other way around, after
finding success drawing larger IOR designs in the 1980s, Nelson-Marek in San Diego then returned to MORC, contributing several more successful custom designs a few years later. ‘In the mid-1970s there was great
interest in both the US and overseas for the IOR fractional Ton classes,’ said Alan Andrews. ‘The Quarter and Half Ton classes promoted new designs and builds at what were considered affordable levels compared to the larger One and Two Ton sizes. Yet the competitive boats even at these levels were still too expensive to build for the broad marketplace, and MORC was seen as a more affordable alternative.’ Andrews explains that even within
California there were two non-IOR alternatives that were similar and popular in this era: MORC in southern California and a rule system like it for small boats
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