ORC fixing known issue in VPP

For a rating rule based on transparency, the Offshore Racing Council (ORC) has not done well with recent messaging regarding the Danish XR-41 boat outsmarting ORC’s Velocity Prediction Program (VPP).

The XR-41 won the 2025 ORC World Championship, but it was deemed faster on the water than their rating would indicate. An investigation revealed an anomaly, and while ORC works on their VPP, they issued the boat a rating adjustment, which has been widely referred to as a penalty.

ORC was not quick to explain, issuing a technical statement a month after their annual meeting that likely did little to pull people off the window ledge. Seeking to further placate the people, ORC US Communication Manager Dobbs Davis responds to a Scuttlebutt report which used the ‘penalty’ reference:

The Editor’s use of the term “penalty” as it relates to ORC ratings is unfortunate and an inaccurate description of how ORC calculates ratings.

First, an ORC “rating” is not a single number, like you see with PHRF or IRC. It is a matrix of predictions of how the boat will perform over a variety of wind speeds and wind angles. In the US and Canada, these are then condensed into ratings for selected models of wind speed and direction, such as Windward/Leeward or All-Purpose, along with an estimate of wind speed.

Second, what generates these ratings are measurement inputs to the VPP. Nothing else…there are no arbitrary “penalties” added to a rating.

In the case of the XR-41, the designers took advantage of a known issue in the hydro model of the VPP and exploited it, and when ORC investigated the delta between rated and actual performance, they recognized this problem needed to be addressed ASAP.

A solution was explored to fix this glitch in the hydro model for a VPP that needed to be presented to the ORC Congress for approval in early November at their Annual Meeting in Dublin. This generated the 10 sec/mile difference for the XR-41 that the Editor refers to as a “penalty.”

The ORC Technical Committee and X-Yachts are putting further effort into exploring how to better fix this problem, as described in the published statements and reports. They are working fast, as our 2026 VPP is needed to be ready in a few weeks.

If people are wondering what all this means for their boat’s rating and competitiveness, the answer is probably no effect as the problem pertains to only a very few of the 1000s of boat designs in the ORC database.