Blood on the carpet

Peter Bentley looks forward to this weeks ISAF Annual Meeting

IMS racing - still alive and well in the Med

The existing ORC has also offered its vision of the future. And the picture is not a pretty one. Their submission is complex, but careful reading reveals a thinly disguised plot to ensure the perpetual supremacy of the IMS rule. If adopted (and you can be pretty sure it won't be) this submission would allow only those handicap classes with a VPP (velocity prediction programme) derived rule to hold World Championships. And the only VPP derived handicap system in operation today? You guessed it, the IMS. The ORC submission also sets out to limit who could administer handicap rules and where in the world they could do it. Josef Stalin would have been proud of some of their wackier proposals.

Perhaps even more significant than their attempt to immortalise the IMS is the ORC's attempt to take control of the technical aspects of all international handicap rules. Does anyone seriously think the RORC will put their 'secret formula' IRC rule in the hands of the guys who's main interest is in perpetuating IMS? Or that US Sailing will simply hand over Americap? It seems unlikely.

What does seem likely is that Henderson and the ISAF Executive will get their way. The ORC will be reconstituted as a broad ranging Offshore Racing Committee and the existing group will be reconstituted to represent the interests of the IMS class. One can only hope that the terms of reference of ORC II will be broad enough for it to eventually look after the interests of the one-design community together with a number of different handicap classes.

Anyone who hankers after the well defined offshore racing scene in the 1970s and 80s when the IOR ruled supreme will be sorely disappointed. The one thing that ISAF will surely prove unable to do no matter how the committees are constituted is define a single measurement for the world. Indeed it is doubtful if such a situation can ever again be imposed from the top down. Any rule or system that does succeed in unifying the world of offshore racing will come about from user pressure rather the imposition of a defined system from above.

There will be blood on the carpet before this one is finally resolved.

See page three for the great Yngling debate...