Australian Sailing periodically calls a meeting of its IRC & ORC Owners Committee to discuss issues of interest to keelboat owners in Australia. The Group is chaired by Shevaun Bruland, a Director of Australian Sailing, and its membership consists of David Griffith, Noel Cornish AM, Rupert Henry in NSW, Bruce Taylor and Jason Close in Vic, Grant Wharington in QLD and Ed Psaltis in Tas. All members of the Group have demonstrated extensive commitment to the sport and have invested years of their time in keelboat racing.

One major issue being wrestled with is changing how ‘big boat’ events are run and using technical committees. Boat owners or crew are sometimes uncertain, at best, or unhappy, at worst, about another boat’s rating. The best way, one might argue the only way, is for the organising authority to appoint a technical committee to conduct event measurement and equipment inspection. 

Accuracy of a boat’s weight under IRC is a big concern and subject to ongoing discussions in the Committee. The difficulty here is that for an Endorsed certificate, weight can be derived from a couple of sources. However, indubitably a calibrated single-point load cell is the only way to go.

Whist the accuracy of weights has been an important discussion, the Committee also promoted a change in policy to permit Standard IRC certificates in Australia. The request was considered and approved after a public consultation period. Australian Sailing will begin issuing IRC ratings based on owner declared data from June 2024.

Feedback on the public consultation on whether or not, and if so, how the sport limits weather routing and information fed to autopilots is an issue that the Committee have been advised on. This is in response to a position taken by World Sailing to keep offshore yacht racing as a primarily human endeavour.

Boat owners who want policy related IRC or ORC matters looked at can take advantage of this committee at any time. The next major piece of work will be the IRC and ORC congresses where proposed rating rule changes are discussed and decided.

Australian Sailing's ratings hub is here.

By Melanie Peasey