Game time at ORC World Championship

The 2025 ORC World Championship has attracted 65 yachts to vie for three titles on August 11-16 in Tallinn, Estonia. Ranging in length from 28 to 47 feet and represent 9 nations from throughout Europe, the racing program has two offshore races and up to six inshore windward/leeward races.

Nine teams will race in Class A, 22 yachts in Class B, and 34 yachts in Class C, with each class to be awarded a 2025 ORC World Champion title. All-amateur teams will also be recognized with Corinthian division awards.

The schedule begins with a long overnight offshore race that will vary in length for each of the three classes: 211 miles for Class A, 195 miles for Class B, and 175 miles for Class C. These courses all have a short north-south lap in the bay north of Tallinn, then take each class on a roughly triangular-shape tour of the Gulf of Finland from Estonia to Finland then back to the Estonian coast.

“This first offshore race and the shorter Coastal race later this week are very important,” said ORC Chairman Bruno Finzi. “They test the teams skills that we do not see in the shorter course racing, such as seamanship, sail selections, navigation, strategy, and endurance. These are all important traits we want to test at our ORC championship events, so the results for these races cannot be discarded from each team’s score.”

In Class A there is a team to watch that is actually new to ORC competition but has a proven track record at numerous Grand Prix-level racing events. Niklas Zennstrom’s Carkeek Fast 40+ RAN is very much an international team: Zennstrom and his boat are flagged from Sweden, but the boat was built in the UK where it has spent much of its competitive life in the Fast 40 class since being launched in 2018, and the team is an assembly of some of the sport’s top talent from the US, UK and New Zealand.

This team is well-tuned: besides racing this RAN in Spain and France earlier this season, they are also coming off competing at the Admiral’s Cup in Cowes where some raced on Zennstrom’s TP 52 of the same name while others competing on other teams.

“We’re excited to be here,” said tactician Adrian Stead, whose last ORC Worlds was in 2018 in The Hague racing with Tillmar Hansen on his TP52 OUTSIDER. “The boat is really fantastic to sail, especially when the wind is over 8 knots or so, and we’re looking forward to the mixed format of offshore and course racing. We’re pretty new to ORC racing and still learning, but expect this to be competitive and fun.”

Other contenders include Jani Lehti’s GP 42 MERCEDES BENZ (FIN), Bronze medalist in Class A at the 2021 ORC Worlds here at the same venue, and Mati Sepp’s innovative Matteo Polli-designed ECO 44 CLEAN ENERGY (EST), built locally with only sustainable materials used in its construction.

Class B in Tallinn may likely be a tough fight between several veteran teams with proven track records up against some promising talent that is racing an exciting new design making its ORC Worlds debut at this event.

Marcin Sutkowski’s Grand Soleil 44P WINDWHISPER (POL) has an impressive record in this class: four consecutive World titles, including last year’s earned in Newport USA. His team is back now in Tallinn where they won their first Class B title in 2021, and it would be safe to say they are the team to beat here this year.

Yet this will not be easy: there is an exciting new design from X-Yachts that has made an impressive debut this year in ORC racing throughout the Baltic region and which will be in the hands of four quite capable teams from Germany and Denmark this coming week in Tallinn.

The new XR41 is the product of extensive research and development for optimal ORC rated performance and has a different design philosophy to the Grand Soleil 44 benchmark design in this class. Rather than being large and heavy at over 9 tons, the XR 41 is slightly small but over 2 tons lighter and thus more nimble and versatile in a class that will have 22 boats on both the start line and throughout the Class B race course.

Jesper Radich is one in a long line of talented Danish sailors, and throughout this season he has been intimately involved with the development of the XR 41 program. For this event he is the skipper and tactician of FORMULA X (DEN), leading an all-Danish team that includes a rising new talent at the helm, Jeppe Borch, who won the latest World Match Racing Tour event at GKSS Match Cup Sweden.

“This XR41 project has been exciting, the best high-level program in Danish sailing in years,” said Radich. “Besides winning five of our five regattas we raced this year, we have been able to put in 15 days of on-the-water time in preparation for this event. We feel this design is very versatile and not pushed hard into any one direction, and so we feel confident in the conditions we expect to have here in the coming week.”

Yet Radich acknowledges the competition will be tough. “We will not feel safe in this group, we will have to push hard in every race because there are some tough teams and many past champions in our class.”

Another XR41 contender is Jens Kuphal with his eXciteR (GER). Kuphal is a veteran to numerous ORC championship events, winning the Europeans in Class B in 2022 racing his Landmark 43 INTERMEZZO (GER). He is upbeat about this new design, which in a sense represents a generational challenge because of the dominance of X-41’s in previous ORC championships and their continued relevance as a competitive threat.

While there are not any new designs that have come to Tallinn to conquer Class C, this is the largest class at event with 34 entries, many of whom are past champions and highly-experienced in competing in big crowded fleets like this.

The first has to be the mixed Estonian and Italian team on Ott Kikkas’s Italia 9.98 SUGAR (EST), who on their slightly larger Italia 11.98 of the same name have 3 World and 2 European titles in the past six years. Another mixed nationality team of Estonians and Italians are racing on Aivar Tuulberg’s Arcona 340 KATARIINA II (EST) who have also been successful in this class, winning the ORC Class C European Championship three times and been on the Worlds podium twice in Class B racing on Tuulberg’s Swan 42 in the Mediterranean.

Another strong contender in this class has been relying on only all-amateur talent, routinely winning the Corinthian division along with several podium performances in overall scoring at several Worlds and European Championship events in the last 11 years.

Yet Patrik Forsgren this year has a new squad on his modified First 36.7 GARMIN TEAM PRO4U (SWE) composed of a gender-balanced mix of 20-30 year old amateur sailors who have been training and sailing a lot in the run-up to Tallinn. The bow-pit team of Emil Forsgren and Noa Bergstrand explained:

“We have done a lot go regattas this season and arrived here early to train and observe the conditions in the local waters – this is my first time in Tallinn,” said Bergstrand. Having been to the Worlds before, Forsgren said “There are a lot of really good teams here, so I think since we know how to sail the boat the most important thing will be for us to remain focused and sail our best.”

Except during the 2020 pandemic pause, the ORC World Championship is an annual event held at various locations in Europe and in the USA. It attracts local and international professional and amateur teams to compete for a week of mixed inshore and offshore racing among offshore-capable yachts.

“This is our system’s 25th annual World Championship,” said ORC Chairman Bruno Finzi. “It continues what is now a long tradition of offering the offshore racing community this unique and popular opportunity to compete at a high level using the fairest possible system of handicap racing.”

Details: https://orc.org/worlds2025