Roughly one every three weeks, says the author. Another traffic jam for residents of Aalsmeer, home to one of four yards that make up Feadship. When Michael Kors founder Lawrence Stroll decided to downsize this is what he had in mind, a tidy five-deck 259-footer. Stroll joined the delivery for the picturesque voyage to open water, probably also ensuring there were no dings before taking delivery
the very top-level sailors are job-hopping between all four classes and 50-100 more between two or three of them. In contrast, interest in offshore racing continues to grow. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than by 2024 Cowes Week, attracting just 114 entries distributed over eight IRC starts, while this year’s Rolex Fastnet Race reached its entry limit of 450 yachts in just minutes! An amazing 217 boats registered for the RORC’s 100th anniversary edition in the first minute after the website opened. Sadly, by mid-June the Cowes Week IRC entries are barely up to 60. If I look at two events I used to sail in Holland and Germany, the North Sea Regatta and Kieler Woche, the perspective is not much different. The 2024 North Sea Regatta had about 30 fully crewed boats racing in ORC, 12 in the local SW Rating and five in IRC; out at sea the North Sea Race had 38 fully crewed boats in IRC plus 22 in ORC, of which about 12 boats scored in both classes. For Kieler Woche 2024 I count 26 crewed entries in ORC, but 67 teams in the ‘offshore’ Kiel to Eckernförde and 60 for the return to Kiel. I left out the double-handed boats. Double-handed participation is increasing but not surprisingly growth is slowing. For instance, of the 64 boats that raced this year’s North Sea Race 12 scored in IRC Double-Handed and 10 in ORC Double-Handed, of which a few who entered in both IRC and ORC further complicated the picture. In the western Med Maxi racing now makes up a big proportion of the total numbers who race on corrected time. At some events the Maxis even outnumber the total entries across all the ORC starts below maxi size! Like in Sorrento where the IMA Maxi Euro- peans this year attracted 30 entries and the ORC Med Champi- onship just 17. Look back to 2022 and Sorrento hosted 40 ORC yachts and 24 Maxis. In 2023 it was 31 ORC entries plus 26 Maxis. In 2024 the trend continued… 13 boat in ORC and 24 Maxis. Which is just one event of course. At the highly popular Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez in 2024 we saw 165 boats starting in IRC of which 40 (sic) were Maxis, with steady numbers over the past four years. The 2024 Giraglia Offshore had 68 crewed boats in IRC and 44 in ORC; the 2024 Giraglia Inshores had 56 boats in IRC including 21 Maxis plus a further 25 boats in ORC. In 2025 the Giraglia Inshores have 25 Maxis in IRC 0 plus 41 boats in IRC 1 and 2 for a total of 66 in IRC. The two 2025 ORC starts totalled 42 boats. Another take on the fully crewed monohull perspective could be to check the number of ‘high-end’ certificates for IRC and ORC, so certification based on measurements by qualified measurers instead of by owner input. Then I see about 2,500 boats with a cur- rent ORC International certificate, of a total of 9,000 boats on the ORC system. And about 1,400 boats that carry IRC Endorsed cer- tificates out of some 4,000 boats with current IRC certificates. I guess, because I cannot find accurate numbers, that about 1,000 yachts are certified for both rating systems, reducing the total number of IRC and ORC certified boats to about 12,000. I see little ‘high-end’ certification growth in either IRC or ORC. Before Covid in 2019 2,771 ORCi certificates were issued and 2,813- 3,000 for 2022, ’23 and ’24. The principal growth in ORC certificates comes from new categories like Double Handed, Multihull, Non- Spinnaker, Superyacht and J-Class. The popular ORC Club shows marginal decline from 2022 to 2024, from 7,138 to 6,881. If yacht racing was a company there would be ample reason to be concerned. Some products do fine, others definitely do not. There seems to be a lack of vision and strategy – but then again it is not a company and certainly not one company but hundreds of little ones! Often with just one product and competing with each other for client attention rather than streamlining for client satisfaction. Next will be the Rolex TP52 World Championship, then the Admiral’s Cup including the Fastnet. We will soon know a lot more about how this year’s TP52 boat optimisation choices, in box-rule for Super Series or IRC for the AC, have panned out. And who has won two of yachting’s most prestigious trophies. Rob Weiland, TP52 Class Manager
SEAHORSE 37 ®
W QUIP E E YOUR PASSION O
WWW.UBIMAIORIT ALIA .C UBI oRI ALIATMAI
®
SAIL BLOCKS – DECK HARDWARE – CUSTOM PROJECT
S
COM
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 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150
