The IRC Congress was held in early October with delegates being present in person at the RORC club house and many attended by electronic means. Australian boat owners were represented by David Griffith, owner of the yacht Whispers, and Chris Zonca who is Australian Sailing’s Ratings Manager.

In advance of the IRC congress, the Owners’ Working Group met to discuss all of the submissions and agenda items being considered at the IRC Congress and establish what Australia’s position should be on each.

The IRC Technical Committee advised the Congress that they are interested and actively engaged in investigating several areas of concern expressed by various fleets or regions. There is the feedback that TP 52s are continually winning, particularly in Australia; this also applied to, for instance, light 70 footers. The Technical Committee comments that solutions must be generic, and physics based, and a possible solution has been found around the power/weight ratio for that size of boat. 35-40’ boats are another area that is being looked at, as possibly not performing to rating at present.

The Technical Committee would like to find a better approach to how keels are treated under the IRC rule, and how to find a user friendly way of rating the number of headsails being set at the same time. Solutions to these issues may be forthcoming in 2023.

The Australian Sailing submissions were well received. A practical change will be introduced to the IRC constitution providing more lead time for submissions to be received and circulated to delegates. This will provide more time for all national Congress delegates to consider, consult and form a position on proposed rule changes. The proposal from Australian Sailing concerning two IRC certificates, or ratings, which would allow boats to change configurations such as between inshore and offshore was accepted in principle but deferred until June 2022 when it could be run as a pilot for IRC ‘South’ countries, with a view to rolling it out in January 2023 or earlier for all countries.

Australian Sailing’s rating page is at https://www.sailingresources.org.au/ratingshome_2021_22ud/
For the IRC rating system and meeting documents go to https://ircrating.org/

By Glen Stanaway https://www.sailing.org.au/about/ourstaff/