Reinventing the wheel?

Class chair Stephanie Merry give her opinion about the state of IRM and the prospect of a new grand prix rule

Aside from her day job working at Qinetic, the facility in Gosport where GBR Challenge carried out their tank testing, Stephanie Merry 18 months ago gave up her position as Rear Commodore of RORC to take the chair of the IRM Class Association. The Daily Sail was keen to get her views about the state of IRM and the prospect of a new international grand prix rule.

"I think we provide a very good forum for al the modern one design classes to race against each other when there’s only a small number around," Merry says, explaining the role IRM fulfils at present. In the spring series there is an IRM class including a handful of Farr 40s, Ker 11.3s, a Mumm 36 and a modified Sydney 40. "Those are all one designs, but there aren’t enough of them to have good class racing, so they can come and race in IRM."

While this is the state of affairs at present she points out this was not how IRM was originally conceived. "We wanted it to be the rule where people would design new boats, but at the same time it was formulated I believe to encompass modern one designs."

So why hasn't it been accepted abroad? "I think that RORC was not very sensitive when they launched IRM to the way that other countries might feel on having a new international rule introduced which they had not been party to. And I think it was not well marketed. Having said that we are getting some international uptake now. Dune the Farr 40 from Belgium say they want to come and play with us. There’s a chap called Steve Travis from Seattle, who’s a member of our class association who came over to do Cork Week and he enjoyed it so much that he’s coming back this year. And the YC Dinard are organising an IRM regatta for us. So unfortunately it is all a bit late but it is all starting to happen now."

One of her fears regarding a new rule is how long it will take to put into effect and the potential void created while this happens. "I imagine RORC aren’t going to put a lot of development into the rule if they believe that a new rule has been agreed for the future. The question is how long will it take? My biggest concern about this is that people will put everything on hold because they believe a new rule is imminent – and it may not be imminent."

Merry, like many others who have been racing in latest generation of one designs, like the Farr 40s, 52s and Ker 11.3s, hopes the new rule will encompass this new style of performance boat. "I fully support the concept as long as it encourages fast exciting boats which are stiff and have lots of sail area and that people want to race. Personally I don’t believe it should be for cruising boats at all. I don’t think there should be any allowance for having cruising interiors. We are talking - I hope - a rule for grand prix racers. It has my full support as far as that is concerned."

She says there is a need for a grand prix rule like IRM to allow development in yacht design while at the same time attempting to encourage racing at the highest, most competitive level.

"As I see it a rule like IRC attempts to rate fairly every boat. So it will look at a cruising boat, for example, and say it has got an interior so they will give it an appropriate rating to cover that fact. At the end of the day it will fairly rate every boat - and it does a fantastic job of that. In which case, why build and design a new boat under IRC? Why not get a boat that has a very favourable handicap because it is getting a bit old and stick new gear on it – you’ll probably be more competitive?

"So we need a rule that takes out the top 5-10% of owners and crew who really want to race - they want to win events in a fast exciting boat, against similar boats. They don’t want some boat coming in 20 minutes later than them and beating them on handicap - yes, it may be well sailed, but it may also be the conditions.

"You certainly want a rule that isn’t heavily affected by conditions and IRM achieves that because they are all similar boats. So they don’t say it’s heavy weather so Desperado [Richard Loftus' Swan 65] is going to win in class one because it is a heavy boat or it is light weather in which case Desperado will be last."

The reason Merry thinks IRM hasn't been widely taken up is partly because of the way it was marketed at outset, but may also be related to local conditions experienced in different parts of the world.

"You get very different sailing in the Med. You get very light winds or it blows Force 11 when you don’t go out. IMS boats have fairly low stability, so they start to heel over when it starts to blow 10-15 knots. That’s not appropriate for our UK waters for example. So that’s why you have to get the whole of the sailing community involved."

What fires up Merry is the prospect of an international grand prix rule that encourages fast boats. "I don’t own a boat so I believe I am being totally altruistic when I say this: I want the racing community to be able to move forward and I feel at the moment it is stuck in a rut. I know a lot of people hark back to IOR but in the early days of IOR it did encourage all sort of activity and development and it got stuck. Every rule has its day. I would like to see that development regenerated through another international rule. We want a rule for the Admiral’s Cup for example – they were totally stuck with what to use for that - and the Sydney-Hobart, Middle Sea, etc."

There still remains the problem of major events where the organisers are looking for an overall winner. "At Cowes Week IRM want their own class, but they want the big trophies to be awarded to them as well and you can understand that Cowes Week don’t want to do that because it is excluding a majority of the fleet."

The compromise is that for the first three days of Cowes Week the IRM fleet will be racing on their own course with a committee boat start (as the Farr 40s did in 2001) before they flip back into Cowes Week joining up with the IRC fleet.

Ironically Merry has been sailing the Spring Series on the IMX40 Magnum, a nice IMS600 class yacht, but will be shortly be back on board the One Design 35 No Respect. She has a neat solution to the grand prix rule problem: "If we could get the King of Spain into a IRM boat - then we’d be home and dry..."

Over the next few days we will be getting the views of various key people on this topic. If you have a view then click here to here to send us an email via Outlook or here to use a text box.