Australian Sailing has a long standing and ongoing role to act as the local office for two rating systems: IRC and ORC. Because of this, the IRC & ORC Owners Committee has spent much of its time discussing issues relating to the two rating systems. 

Weighing under IRC remains the issue of greatest importance. Australian Sailing has changed some weighing practices to provide that level of integrity the IRC fleet want. The changes addressed standards for weighing boats and reviewing weight data amongst the fleet. 

Both rating systems had their Congress meetings over October and November. The IRC & ORC Owners committee met three times in the lead up and over this period to stay on top of issues being discussed at those meetings. 

At the IRC Congress, Australian Sailing moved that the tolerance for weight variation be made 1%. After extensive preconference negotiation and many trials 2% was agreed upon as a usable solution. To improve transparency the boat data available on the IRC website will be expanded to include more data without compromising the systems integrity. 

On the ORC Congress agenda, WRS (weather routing scoring) was high on the congress agenda. The scoring system is very well developed and testing shows it is working very well. The scoring method uses weather models and the Velocity Prediction Program (VPP) to determine the expected time for each boat on the course. This is then converted into a time correction factor for each boat in the fleet. The definition of performance /cruising boats is being tightened up to remove ambiguity in making this decision. Meaning boat which declare a cruising must have effective living facilities below and enough cockpit seating for the crew. 

The IRC & ORC Owners Committee are also discussing the best approach to the Australian Yachting Championship. Consideration is being given to location, timing and collaboration with existing events to ensure the greatest numbers and highest quality of competition. 

About the committee:
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 AM, Noel Cornish AM and Rupert Henry in NSW, Bruce Taylor and Rob Date 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. 

Information about IRC weighing is here.
Click here for ORC. 

By Chris Zonca.