Boats, Design & Rating
Yacht design, rating rules, IRC and ORC
Every offshore boat is a compromise between speed, rating, seaworthiness and cost, and every rating rule pushes designers towards some answers and away from others.
This section looks at how those compromises are made. It covers yacht design, the IRC and ORC rating rules and the box rules, and how offshore boats have evolved to today's wide, powerful hulls and the scow bows now winning races. One piece asks whether a 33-foot scow has conquered offshore racing after proving it round Ireland. Another explains how to design an offshore race boat, and why it is a two-horse race.
The point is not to turn readers into naval architects. It is to help owners and crews understand their own boat: why she is fast in some conditions and slow in others, what the rating is really rewarding, and where the rule leaves room to gain.
That matters when buying a boat, when optimising one and when choosing which races to enter. A rating that looks generous on paper may assume conditions you will not get, or a crew you do not have.
I rebuilt and race the S&S 34 Morning After, a design more than fifty years old, so I take a particular interest in old boats beating new ones. It happens more often than designers would like.
The articles are listed below, newest first. Explore the other subjects in the FirstShift article library, or read the latest articles.
