Grand Prix Rule revealed

Following the latest meeting of the working party in Barcelona, Stuart Quarrie discusses the direction of the new rule

Some heavyweight politicing over our sport is taking place at the ISAF annual conference in Barcelona this week. Alongside this the working party, tasked by the RORC, ORC and US Sailing to conjure up a new globally-acceptible rule for 'grand prix' race boats, has been having its latest meeting, culminating in a state of the nation presentation yesterday evening ( click here to see their Powerpoint presentation - NB this is 1.5MB in size so may take a while to open).

Stuart Quarrie, who along with Commodore Chris Little has been representing RORC at this meeting, told TheDailySail what they have so far agreed upon.

At present the Grand Prix big boat racing scene around the world contains too many disparate elements. IRM for some reason has failed to hit the mark outside of the UK. IMS is buoyant in Spain and Italy, but when pushed to the limit produces ridiculous unstable and unseaworthy boats. In most other major regattas force of numbers means that many race organisers are using IRC, inappropriately in many cases.

It should be stressed that what the working party are trying to achieve is not to create a handicap rule that will act as the ultimate leveller for all manner of boats - rules such as IRC and IMS handle this very effectively. What they are trying to achieve is a rule that is suitable solely for out and out race boats, that will be accepted by both owners and race organisers around the world and that will produce boats that are exciting and desirable to sail.

(see our previous articles - about the new rule and our interviews with IRM Class Chair Stephanie Merry , ORC Chairman Bruno Finzi, and designer Jason Ker .)

At present the working party are still at the 'general concept' stage and the detail of the rule has yet to be worked out.

Taking into account the results of a survey of interested parties throughout the world carried out earlier this year, the working party have decided to concentrate initially on three classes at 30, 40 and 50ft, that will effectively be level rating.

"If you take the 40s and 50s, historically right the way through from IOR and IMS and whatever rating rule you like, there has been major owner interest at those sizes - the Farr 40s, Farr 52s, Transpac 52s," says Stuart Quarrie. "They are two sizes that historically have been proven to be supported by owners at the top level.

"The 30 footer we see probably as an introduction-type class. We are still working on it, but probably with cost constraints put into that class which wouldn’t be in the bigger boat classes."

One of the unexpected points to come out of the survey of interested parties was the number who want to race offshore. "We were very surprised," says Quarrie. "A huge number - about 80% of the 82% who thought that an international rule is needed - want to have boat that are capable of sailing offshore as well as inshore."

As a result the new rules will have to incorporate a number of features for the boats to improve their sea keeping abilities - such as minimum freeboard, some sort of basic accommodation and even minimum scantling requirements. Aside from round the cans races, the new generation of boats should be seaworthy enough to go offshore in events such as the Rolex Sydney-Hobart and Fastnet races. However Quarrie says that the working party want more than this. "The stakeholders have committed to promoting, persuading, cajoling and introducing events around the world to produce, both regional and world circuits."

One of the most positive aspect of the new rule is that it will deliberately typeform to produce fast, stable boats. "What we got back from the survey - and it is pretty self-obvious anyway - is that people want boats that are stiff, that are fast and are fun to sail. Nobody in the world wants a new rule that produces boats with wooden keels and tons of internal ballast."

To achieve this Quarrie says that the new rule will not reward go-slow features. "The idea is that because there will not be credit for go-slow features designers will be able to design boats that will fit the rule, rather than having to design dogs that beat the rule."

In terms of the types of boats that will take part in each class, Quarrie anticipates that the big boat class is likely to include predominantly one-offs, where owners can have their own unique boat. In the 40ft range it is likely to include a mixture of one-offs and production boats while the small boat will be different again. "At 30ft it will be mixture, those that want to try a new young designer and their local boat builder and those who will want a limited production run boat and, if allowed, those who want to put £500,000 into a 30ft boat, which is why in the small class we anticipate, although at this stage we are not sure how, there are likely to be cost limits."

The technicians involved with the rule have started to flesh out the details, but at present only in a minimal way. "They will be taking the brief and producing the first draft and there is a significant budget from the stakeholders to get feedback from the wider design community, so not just boat designers, but rig and sail designers and the whole community," says Quarrie.

At present no one has been appointed to take charge of this, but it is high on the stakeholders' job list. Progress is likely to continue apace as the draft for the rule is scheduled to be published in June 2004 followed by the finalised rule in September. Chris Little has confirmed that provided the new rule finds support around the world RORC will be introducing it for the Admiral's Cup in 2005.

One of the more controversial points and one which could be argued indefinitely is over the degree of freedom allowed in the design of the boats. Logically the theory goes that one design racing is the most competitive form of sailing whereas the less rules there are the wider variety of boats and the more uncompetitive the racing becomes. However there are numerous examples of one design classes where one boat shows superiority whether it came out of the mould right or simply due to some unfathomable magic factor. Hence why Olympic classes have favoured builders. Similarly fleets such as the 60ft trimarans and Open 60s in France have proved that even the most open classes are typeforming given some maturity, and ultimately produce highly competitive racing.

In thedailysail's view if you are not going to go one design racing and design is to become a significant factor in whether a boat wins or loses then a grand prix handicap rule should go the whole hog and fully embrace this, giving designers full reign to try new ideas and move our sport on - otherwise why not stick to one design racing? The ultimate objective of a new rule should be for the best designed and sailed boat to be the winner.

There is an argument that full-on development classes are more expensive. This is certainly true, but not completely true. Owners are equally capable of spending serious amounts of money to ensure their one design wins - those in doubt should check out the Farr 40 fleet. One of the systems which we have seen and seems to work best at curbing costs in development classes is the International 14 where the powers that be control the pace of development and any potential arms race by allowing a gradual introduction of new go-faster features.

However all this assumes that there are a body of owners out there who want to constantly sail the fastest boats with the latest go-faster gear. The working party's survey indicated that 50% of those who completed their questionaire 'favoured some diversity of design'.

The fact of the matter is that pretty much throughout the sailing world whether you're talking about big boats or dinghies, where owners are involved precious little design innovation takes place these days. We blame this lack of pioneering spirit on modern-day lifestyles. More and more people simply want to leap on their boat and go sailing rather than spend endless hours and dollars in the boatyard trying to create or transform their craft into 'something better'. The F18 catamaran for example is in theory a development class but the only boats you see racing are production boats. There is even little real development these days in the French open classes, with the exception of precious few free-thinking individuals such as Yves Parlier.

Anyhow, we digress - while '30ft, 40ft, 50ft LOA and otherwise do what you like given a few stability and safety criteria' might be our vision of new Grand Prix Rule utopia it is not what the Working Party are conceiving and not apparently what owners want. A topical example is whether or not canting keels, as used on Wild Oats in the Admiral's Cup, are to be outlawed. The present thinking is that they will be - to start with at any rate.

"What we have decided - we have done a lot of research and thought on that - and we would equate canting keels and fixed keels almost but not quite in the same way as the hulls of multihulls as an analogy," explains Quarrie. "Although you can rate a canting keel fairly against a fixed keel, all that would do is ensure that the boats crossed the finishing line at the same time. They would have gone in different directions and at different speeds on different legs of the course, so that would not give close racing which is one of the prime requirements from the sailing world, both owners and sailors.

"We want a rule that will give close boat on boat racing. We don’t want dogs and race boats and we don’t want a particular type of race boat that does this and another type of race boat that does that because then you don’t have close racing. So we have decided that you can’t have close racing between canting keels and fixed keels and at the moment we believe that fixed keels are the way to go."

Quarrie cites the example of the heyday of the Half Ton class. "Most half tonners were 30ft, with fractional rigs and there was a boat designed which fitted the rule, that was 38ft long and had an unstayed, mainsail-only rig. That sort of design innovation we don’t believe gives close racing."

Would they allow the old, slow and rather inconvenient technology of water ballast? "Possibly water ballast, although that is a grey area at the moment," continues Quarrie. "From the survey respondents and other research we have done, there is no great desire at the grand prix level to have water ballasted boats.

"To a certain extent, the pro-factor of water ballast is smaller crews. For grand prix round the cans you have a minimum size of crew that you need anyway in order to race the boat and there will be beam limits and there will be inherent low VCG-type stability which means that crew weight becomes less of an issue."

The presentation does however include the possibility of coming up with future rules for boats both bigger and smaller than the initial 30-50ft length and this 'may or may not allow canting keels'.

"The idea with that is that particularly in the big boat box, which we are not proposing to introduce straight away because we don’t think we have enough information to produce it and we don’t feel there is enough call immediately, that might well allow canting keels," says Quarrie. The underlying VPP of the new rule would be able to rate canting and non-canting keel boats

The working party are also keen to be able to grandfather boats although Quarrie indicates that this will be harder for some than others.

"If you have a boat that because of existing rules has lots of internal accommodation spread about the boat, then just putting a new keel or a new rig on isn’t going to do the job," says Quarrie. "So there will be boats that can be modified or just grandfathered in in existing trim. A Farr 40 might well be one of those. There will be other boats that really won’t be able to get close to it. I don’t want to get draw into whether one boat or another will fit, but if it is a stiff, fast race boat, then in principle it should be able to fit in."

The rule when it is introduced will be publicly available and fully published, says Quarrie and this also ties up with their drive to come up with a rule that will prevent boats having to take to the race course with a powerful laptop to find out if they have won.

"A large majority of the questionnaire respondents wanted simple scoring," says Quarrie. "We are currently researching whether we can get it as simple as a single number or whether one needs for example a light airs number and a heavy airs number. The research on that is a question of looking at previous race results where you have known boats and scoring them using different criteria. The aim is to get to a single number if we can. If that means that designers or owners would have real horses for courses that couldn’t be transportable to other events or venues then we might decide that more than one rating number is needed."

It is possible that the rule might need a further set of numbers. "We are looking at whether some specific events like Transpac needs, not an IMS-complicated scoring system, but an offwind medium airs race number for example. We don’t think we are going to need that, but the jury hasn’t come in yet."

In a similar way the working party are also attempting to make the measurement of boats under the new rule as straightforward as possible.

One of the problems identified with RORC's introduction of IR2000 and its components IRM and IRC was that particularly in the case of IRM it was poorly marketed around the world. Hence having learned this lesson Quarrie says the working party will be throwing considerable resource to prevent this from recurring. "One of the things the stakeholders have committed to is a proper marketing budget and employing staff, whatever is needed, to market the rule both to potential owners and to major events."

Also on the list of things to do is to come up with a name. At the present it is referred to as 'the new grand prix rule' but NGPR isn't catchy enough and at the presentation earlier Chris Little said that coming up with a name is likely to be the first job of whoever ends up with the task of marketing it.

If there is real commitment internationally to the NGPR and it does succeed in enabling top competition between nations on different race courses around the world, then it has to be a good thing and all the more so if it produces boats that are hair raising to sail. The stakeholders are to be congratulated for what could be grand prix sailing's Treaty of Paris.

What's your view about the new rule? Email us here .

To see the Powerpoint presentation of the new Grand Prix rule - click here