 On the occasion of the 2014 Annual General Meeting of the Offshore Racing Congress, where it was revealed that the number of ORC certificates has grown once again by over 10% to over 9000 worldwide, there were also numerous improvements approved for use in the ORC Rules and policies for 2015. These include the devising of a new parameter named CDL to aid organizers in class divisions, changes in the format and scoring of ORC championship events, improvement on the handling of Code 0 sails, and several other minor adjustments and clarifications to the rules that reflect the wishes of the constituency through the submission process. The beta version of the ORC VPP is still under development, but trials runs on the ORC test fleet indicate only minor changes in ratings for 2015, less than 1% for most boats in the fleet. A significant innovation is a new parameter devised by the International Technical Committee (ITC) to help define class limits in ORC championship events. This parameter, called Class Division Length (CDL), relates the upwind performance of an entry to the boat’s rated length, and will be used by event organizers to better group boats of similar performance. CDL is therefore expressed not in terms of rating, but in meters of boat length. These CDL limits are suggested as follows: 17.0 m ≥ Class A > 11.6 m 11.6 m ≥ Class B > 9.7 m 9.7 m ≥ Class C > 8.5 m One of the first uses of CDL will be to define the limits for the three classes at the 2015 ORC World Championship in Barcelona, with the same limits recommended by the ITC for at the ORC Europeans in Parnu. National authorities are free to set their own class limits for their national events. 2015 ORCi certificates will have CDL values on them to provide guidance for event organizers and sailors, but will also have GPH values for general interest. Among measurement items, the stability measurement procedure is now updated with an option to have boat inclined by the weights positioned on the boom in addition to the standard procedure with poles. This will be particularly helpful on boats that would require very heavy weights to be suspended, as well as boats without any spinnaker pole. Improvements to the ORC VPP include better treatment of headsails set flying with a smaller minimum area for headsails set flying and updated aerodynamic coefficients for a smooth transition in rating changes for between 110% jibs and 130% genoas. Among the items related to format of ORC championship events, the Green Book is updated by using the same scoring coefficient of 1.0 for all inshore and offshore races. And while one discard is still allowed, an offshore race can be discarded only when two offshore races are completed, either as two separate races or as a long offshore race with a mid-course scoring gate. Another important update is approved on the use of Implied Wind in Performance Curve Scoring, where the Implied Wind speed of the winner of the race will now be used as the wind speed to score the rest of the fleet. This will replace the current practice of calculating the Implied Wind for each entry in the class. This new approach will producing results which are more fair for light boats that are rated fast in light wind conditions. A re-scoring of events in 2014 with the new method showed no significant change in the overall results, yet gave some better results to the lighter boats that were struggling to reach their rating potential in 6-8 knots of wind. Scoring software programs will be re-programmed to reflect this new and more accurate approach. A summary of the changes to the Rules will be available once the final rules texts are finalized, with the target release date to be 1 January 2015. The complete Minutes of the AGM will also be available soon. |
Salon Nautico Ibiza 
El peligroso lujo de Abdul, el hijo del rey de Arabia Saudí, en Ibiza 
Ibiza Rendezvous 
2015 Designer VPP available for download 
Racing starts in Circuito Atlantico Sur Rolex Cup 