Record usage for ORC rating system

The 56th Offshore Racing Congress (ORC), with 31 Congress members from 19 countries in attendance, was held on November 4 alongside the 2025 World Sailing Annual Conference in Dun Laoghaire, IRL.

Participation was positive in 2025:
• Positive upward growth measured in number of certificates issued worldwide (14,265 of all types through October 31).
• A record number of boats (9,648) to receive ORC certificates of all types, an increase of 5.0%.
• A record number of ORC Superyacht and ORC Multihull certificates issued thus far this year.
• An all-time high of 45 nations where ORC certificates have been issued.
• A new rating office established in Ireland, with nearly 100 certificates issued in 2025.

Besides providing an overview of the rating system made by ORC Chairman Bruno Finzi, another primary function of the Annual Meeting is for the chairmen of the various ORC Committees to report their recommendations to the Congress for changes to rules and policies for 2026.

The work of the International Technical Committee (ITC) forms the most important core to the ORC’s primary product – the Velocity Prediction Program (VPP) – that produces accurate ratings and scoring options for a wide and growing variety of boat types, from Sportboats to Superyachts, offshore racing monohulls to offshore Multihulls.

Among numerous topics that describe the work of the ITC this year, Vice Chairman Alessandro Nazareth led the discussion on proposed changes to the VPP’s Residuary Resistance (Rr) formulations. This is a hot topic now due to discrepancies found in the rated performance of the new XR-41 – the winning Class B design at this year’s ORC Worlds – and a few other designs.

A proposal for a modified Rr treatment addressing these boats was approved by Congress, but ITC work will continue in the next months to examine more thoroughly the issue and to perform new CFD analyses to help reaching a new Rr formulation.

Another issue that will receive further ITC attention before the end of the year is the role of Age Allowances. Currently, this is capped at 15 years, but it was agreed to examine the effects of possibly extending this to 20 years and/or at different percentage rating benefits based on age.

Continued development of the ORC’s Weather-Routed Scoring tools were also discussed, where for 2026 a web-based application called RaceFlow will get further refinement to allow the user to utilize this powerful new tool in offshore race scoring.

• ORC Committee Minutes: https://orc.org/agm-2025
• 2025 report to World Sailing: https://orc.org/sailors/news-archive/orc-annual-report-2025-now-available

Source: ORC