Morty's viewpoint

Farr International's Peter Morton gave madforsailing his thoughts on the Commodores' Cup

Peter Morton, boss of Farr International in the UK and owner of Mandrake, has a vision for the future of grand prix yacht racing in the UK and that future is...IRM. His Mark Mills-designed 50ft one-off has taken part in most of the major regattas in the UK this year including Cowes Week, Cork Week and most recently the Rolex Commodores' Cup. This latter event he sailed with an impressive crew including Britain's top amateur sailor Stuart Childerley on the helm alongside the likes of Tim Powell and Gerry Mitchell.

madfor sailing: What do you think of the results of the Commodores' Cup?

Peter Morton: I think it's a huge pity that the result hinged on a poor race management decision in the long offshore race basically. You could have taken the ratings certificates in the handicap list and that was the results basically . Is that a fair race? Probably not.

mfs: Was there too much loading on the offshore race?

PM: If they are going to load the offshore race that much, then they need to be much more flexible and much more aware of the conditions and the effects of tides and kedging when you're running a time on time handicap system instead of time on distance. It just seemed to me they set the course and that was it. Someone said to me that as soon as he saw the course he thought the big boats would be sailing up the mountain and the little boats would be sailing down the mountain and that sums it up really.

mfs: The racing seemed to favour the more clunky boats all week.

PM: The whole thing was poor. It was the wrong time of year - the week after Cowes Week. We all turn up in Cowes to take part in a prestigeous international event and in fact it is a building site with some Yorkshiremen dismantling tents. It's a bit like going on holiday and finding the hotel's not finished. And there was no atmosphere, even compared to last time, and that was summed up by the fact that on the Rolex day with sponsors there, that not one member of the winning team could be bothered to turn up. They were all at the Pierview. So therefore there were three boats, 35 crew, three owners couldn't be bothered to turn up because there was no organisation on the social side. It was very poor. Last time when it was a separate event there were cameras and reporters and you didn't really know the results and there was a buzz down there because there was a beer tent on the marina and the results were up on the board.

Was it a small boat regatta? I think it probably was. If you start a race in 3m of water 150yards off the shore where the big boats can't go in and the little boats can. I mean why not start in the middle, the tide's would be the same for everybody? So there were these huge one side beats. Big boats don't come out of tacks as quickly. I just think there was so little thought being put into it.

The day that we all hung around for four hours waiting for the sea breeze, why not go to Christchruch Bay, because there there would have been a sea breeze there two hours earlier and it would been 15 knots and no tide and a perfect day.

mfs: Why do you think they didn't do that?

PM: Frankly. I just don't think these guys knows what going on in the rest of the world. That's the bottom line. If they go and see what's going on in Key West and Miami and Palma and these sort of places and see the flexibility. They're too inflexible in everything from entries to sailing instructions to paper work to race management - everything. It's not geared at the competitors, it's geared at the organisation. It's a slightly disheartening attitude I find.

It doesn't mean it wasn't a success. I'm sure the French are very happy with it. I'm sure the it was a huge success for IRC. I think it proves that the allegations made on the madfor sailing website that IRC now is full of too IRM-type boats is a complete load of rubbush. The comments have been that the English trials have been dominated by IRM-type boats and IRC boats no longer have a chance.

Certainly the British sailors have voted by going to IRM-type boats, the good ones, and what happens is that the better sailed boats do alright, but when a well sailed IRC caravan comes along it is still better than an IRM boat.

On Sunday after the last race one of the guys said 'we got beaten by an X-442'. I said 'was that the one with the radar or the one without the radar?' Frankly I don't have a problem with people sailing boats like that, that's what IRC is for, but I don't want to go racing against a boat with a radar arch and television down below.

All it's done for me is make me think that we need to make sure IRM works. Because if IRM doesn't work we'll be going back to the dark ages, where we were eight years ago. IMS is clearly not going to work in this country - the boats are horrible, no one wants to sail one of those. So it's either going to force people back to caravan racing or into One Designs. The Kers perform well, the Farr 52s perform well, but you can't thrown in something that is 44ft long that rates the same as 35 footer, because there are some conditions when it will just truck along at 44ft long.

Look at Fandango, she was the top performing British boat and she's a genuine cruiser racer. She did very well.

mfs: So maybe IRC does what it says on the tin?

PM: In the long run IRC does need to be given back to the genuine production cruiser racer, for sure. But what it means is that God help us all if IRM doesn't work.

mfs: Maybe you need an IRM division at Commodore's Cup?

PM: I've had three or four comments from owners asking 'what do we do?' I said 'I don't know.'. One of them came back and said why don't we just go to someone like the Royal Southern and organise our own IRM racing. It's not that they don't want those people with cruiser racers to race, it's just that they don't want to race against them. I'm very happy to race against a Ker 11.3 or a farr 52 or a one-off boat, but I don't want to race against a caravan.

The regatta was very good for IRC. But I'm not doing it again without rating bands and lots more parameters. You can't race a boat that gives half an hour every hour and a half to another boat. I said to the boys before the offshore race 'we're going to be first, fourth, last or fourth last.' And I didn't know. When we led them all around the mark I said 'we're first at the moment', and we were coming into the finish and I said 'I still don't whether we're first or fourth last'. Guess what - we were fourth last.

Therefore the time and the money and the effort that goes into an event like that, to have such a sweetstake at the end of the results in such a huge high points scoring race - it's just not worth the money or the effort frankly. We did two reasonably good days including a first place and a third place and were 28th in the double scoring, that was the same as coming 28th in all four of the previous races. When you look at it and look at the effort and the money that goes into - it ain't worth it. We ended up middle of the fleet overall and we had two places out of the top ten.

mfs: And yours was one of the best sailed boats

PM: We were the top big boat and Team Tonic and Bear - they were all well sailed. We got beaten by boats that were doing turns on the start line that were in the third rank. There's no incentive. You may as well take the handicaps and say we'll give first place to the big boats in this race and first place to the littleboats in the next race.

On other days, like Sunday - there was a splattering of different sorts of boats. So on balance you'd have to say that IRC did a very good job. To race a Farr 52 against an X- 442 with a radar arch and get them anywhere near the ball park is a result in its own right I suppose. But I'm not sure that people with X-442s want to race against Farr 52s and I'm bloody certain that people with Farr 52s and Ker 11.3s don't want to race against X-442s. I'm certain of it.

So I've spoken to three people who've said 'next year you'll have lay on your own regatta again'. It wouldn't be a Farr regatta because of the Ker boats. They have good racing and boats like the Farr 40s race well against the Kers. IRM says they are about the same and, guess what, they are about the same. So we've got to find another organisation or do it ourselves to race IRM. And if it means not racing in some of the so-called prestigeous regattas where you are going to come up against a caravan, then so be it.

mfs: All the French boats were typical IMS 600 boats [as is to be used as the small boat for next year's Admiral's Cup]...

PM: I find it strange why anyone would want to get involved with a 40 footer that goes slower than a 37ft Ker boat. I can't get my mind round that. Why would you want one? They don't get anywhere near them on the water. I don't have a problem if other people want to do that. But I don't.

IMS600s - they'll do fine until they come up against one of these Spanish boats. None of those boats would stand a snowball's chance in hell against a proper IMS600 from Spain. Apparently they're doing a short run. There's a rumour going round that they're going to build five boats, one properly and the other four out of chopped strand mat, measure them and then crush them.

Next year, people have said to me do you want to do the Admiral's Cup. What race Mandrake against Shockwave that will give us two days on the round Ireland race? Race a maxi against Mandrake on an inshore windward-leeward? You've got to go into a competition knowing that if you sail well and do the rights things you've got a reasonable chance and all its going to be is weather dependent. The classic example was one Stevie Hayles told me. He sailed on Mari Cha III on the transpac, and in terms of big boats racing against small boats, they took six days to complete the event and they had to give the smallest boat eight days on corrected time!

Can you imagine Shockwave against Mandrake on an 800 mile race? It doesn't bare thinking about. And not knowing whether the IMS600 you put effort into is going to be completely and utterly trashed by one that comes up from some other place. There's not enough known about them. If you were racing Farr 52s against Mandrake against some one-off 55s you'd have swings and roundabouts, but when you are racing them against boats that are twice as big... It's bad enough racing against boats that are 10ft shorter.

mfs: Maybe the royalty of Europe need to move into IRM?

PM: If you take Spain out of the equation, IMS is not really working. Spain is doing its own thing, but where else is it really working? It's not really. And RORC have got an opportunity. IRM is developing into a bloody good rule. It's not perfect and they know it's not perfect. It needs a little more subtlies to iron out the slighter problems.

For me, Cork was by far the best thing this year. You went out there. You could anything from zero to 20 knots and you really didn't know who was going to win. You dind't know if it was going to be a Farr 52 or Mumm 30 that was going to win. The Kers were there and you knew if it was blowing 20 knots and it as going to be a reach you knew you weren't going to be hammered by a Desperado-type boat. And it was great. Everybody knew where they stood and you were racing like for like even though they had a huge disparity in size. And it worked.

The other interesting thing was that we had more response for boats after Cork, because a lot of the people that were in the other classes realised that if you actually take the decent race boats out of IRC, there's not much left in this country. If you took the IRM boats out of IRC0 at Cowes Week you'd have had three or four boats? We've had people saying, 'I want to race against a proper race boat, so maybe I'll get a boat like this'.

So the RORC need to take a lead, like John McWilliams did with Cork and say right "we've going to support this, it;s our rules, we've got the resources, we're going to support it. And in the long run it will protect IRC and if they don't be definite about it what's going to happen is that people with IRC boats, now because the better sailors are in IRM they think that IRM boats are super competitive in IRC, which the Commodore's Cup has proved that they're not. So people are going to drop out of IRC, and going off in Island Handicap or Portsmouth Yardstick again.

So to protect IRC which is hugely important they should say that IRC is going to be a production genuine production cruiser racer rule. Anything else will go into IRM. They've got to do that at the same time as going to people like Cowes Combined Club and saying 'it's our rule, we want you to support IRM, it's our rule' and make sure that the Kit Hobdays, Peter Harrisons, Charles Dunstones and the Nick Hewsons have got some prestigeous trophies to race for.

Because the guy who's bought an X-442 or a Swan - he's bought that because he wants a dual purpose boat. If he's bought one then he's only thought about it to cheat the rule. If he's going cheat the rule and not let him spoil it for other people. Maybe they should say that no boat other than a production cruiser racer gets an IRC certificate unless there is a dispension - such as the guy in the backyard who builds his 35ft cruiser racer. But to have these one-off boats that are built in carbon fibre with all this so-called interior is nonsense. Why not make them go IRM - it's a measured rule? I just hope that IRM works. If it doesn't we're all going off one design racing. RORC need to be much stronger about it.

mfs: Cowes tried IRM and it didn't work...

PM: In the old days, IOR never used to be numerically the biggest class. And IMS is never the biggest class in Key West, PHRF always was, but that doesn't mean it wasn't the most prestigeous class to win. They've got to differentiate between quality and quantity. If they don't allow the more high profile owners to have a more performance-orientated boat and these high profile owners who can afford it, if you force them into cruiser racer-type boats to win that will kill the cruiser racing for everyone because they will put more effort into the sails, the crew, the boat preparation, etc. And to buy a production cruiser racer and to have the bottom faired by Nick Harvey, and have carbon 3DL sails and have the foils all redone, etc etc will spoil it for everyone else, because the rule can't differentiate between an X-442 with a faired this and that and a standard one. The rule can't differentiate between a boat that's got a composite interior and a boat that has got a plywood interior. If it weighs the same and it looks the same, the rule thinks it is the same, but practically it is not.

And there will always be owners who want to do that. IRM gives them that opportunity to protect 99% of the fleet, who do need protecting.

If you look back at the last 20 years in this country, the 1980s, we had grand prix racing in grand prix boats, IOR boats weren't particularly fast boats, but they were Grand Prix boats. And you had the Channel Handicap fleet. And then what happened was that because IOR died, grand prix racing died in this country.

Then we had this period where you couldn't have a grand prix boat because there was nowhere for you to go, so the standard of sailing collapsed big time in the early 1990s. Then when you had the one designs, like the Mumm30s, Farr 40s, the Ker 11.3s coming through - that was interesting again for people wanting to race fast boats, coming out of dinghies, coming out of high performance boats, they all of a sudden had a boat that was fun to sail again. So the standard has gone back up again and we've produced guys who can go out there and do well anywhere.

Now they've got IRM to go into. If IRM fails and they all have to go back into modified X-442s - and I'm not being detrimental towards those type of boats, I think they're fine - but if you need an X-442 or a Swan 60 or whatever it is to win and you force owners back into that, the good younger sailors like Robbie Greenhalgh, of which there are a fantastic number or really good guys, they're not going to be interested in that. They'll end up with them all doing the Tour Voile or other things. They're not going to give any foundation to a better UK sailing scene - we've got that possibility at the moment.

If you watch those four or five Kers wacking each other all week and even the British Farr 40s in the Med. There are good people, well sailed, capable of taking on anybody. And if we lose that because the owners think they can't win or they've got nowhere for them to go, then it'll be a step backwards.

So Commodore's Cup - good and bad. On balance it was okay.

I think rating bands are probably a must. We figured out that having a big boat was dangerous with only four boats and one of the races proved that and when the big boats were first, second, third and fourth and guess what you didn't get the points difference when it was reversed because you were third or fourth last, you were dead. Even if there had only been one small boat race which was the offshore, you were killed.

I think we got more than half our points in one race. If you'd finished the long offshore at the penultimate mark, we would have been top big boat, because Courrier Nord was 18th or something at that time and it would have been fine. I think it was a shame that whole series was spoilt by one result, in a race which we led all around on the water.