Racing older cruisers and IRC

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Hi

Can they compete succesfully or is IRC always bias to newer designs ?

The earlier post on racing cruiser recommendations got me thinking. I race my older cruiser at club level and local regatta under PY and have a lot of fun and some success. Over the next couple years I can see myself doing a bit more both crewed and short handed and perhaps getting an IRC rating . My question is, can an older boat, if tweaked and sailed well ever compete with a lighter faster modern design under IRC handicap? ,if not am I wasting time and money on trying to get my ' beloved' fulmar ( careful now) up to the mark. I suppose my other thought is can the fulmar sail to its IRC number.

Thanks

Howard
 
It seems that as long as the amount of downwind racing is limited, then the older boats have a chance. Love and War, a Sparksman and Stevens 47 built in 1973 won on IRC in the 2006 Sydney to Hobart.

I race my old design (Nicholson 45) on IRC and find that we are quite competitive in the longer races with a lot of upwind. We will go 7 knots upwind and 8 knots downwind. The newer boats will start surfing, and if those conditions prevail then we are out of the running.

I think an older design won the Fastnet a couple years ago as well.

Cheers,
Craig
 
IRC is biased towards cruisers and has an age allowance.

OK, more modern designs will race better and it is a debate whether the age allowance is sufficient to compensate for this but I think it is generally reasonably fair for cruisers and cruiser racers.

If anywhere, I think IRC has more problems at the top end of the spectrum where racing boats are spending a fortune putting in a few whoopee cushions and nominal windows to fiddle their handicap.

What makes a very big difference is how much time & money you spend on sails, equipment, preparing the boat and training.

I think in reality that the owners of many older cruisers don't put in the same time and money as the owners of bigger cruiser racers and that is part of the difference in performance. I'm not at all saying you should to throw that much time and money at it, but if you're in the same class as somebody who does they'll have a distinct advantage.

However, if you're in a class with other older cruisers with a similar level of commitment there's no reason why you shouldn't be competitive and have fun.
 
I found a fulmar at 0.842. This seems really low! Hunter Impalas are off about 0.881.

The issue with old boats vs new boats is an interesting one, and not quite as straightforward as it looks.

IRC is a secret rule, with two guiding principals - to protect the existing fleet and encourage fast stable boats. In this way it is superior to other rules such as IMS, which was an open rule so allowed the designers to really disect it and we ended up with 40 footers with wooden keels and internal ballast.

Through experience with how various designs are treated under the rule IRC designers have come up with a pretty good idea of the best way to win.
You'd have to question a designer if after 20 years of IRC data to collect and analyise his new designs were not more competitive than something designed to another rule, or no rule at all, many years ago. IRC know this, and they have mechanisms to protect older designs, including age allowances, which do definitely work to some extent.
It is difficult to really estimate though, as the best sailors tend to be on the new boats...

BUT. And in your case this is quite a big but, 0.842 is a really low rating, as such you are really unlikely to be competing against brand new IRC designs. For example, have a look at the entry list for the recent winter series in IRC 4
here. Most of that entry list are older boats, and a sigma 33 won.

The other thing to think of is that in IRC racing, even at that rating band, most boats will have racing sails etc.
 
Yes you can defiantly be competitive. It just depends on the length of race and wind conditions. We took part in the Fal500 (a double handed race to the fastnet and back) a couple of years ago on a nich 32 and had the slowest handicap but managed to beat the fleet on handicap (and quite a few on the water!) Likewise if you look at the AZAB results the older boats have done well, beating the class 40's and other race boats. http://www.azab.co.uk/resultlinks.htm

So I would go for it!
 
Thanks so far.

When I have raced in IRC goverened events I have had an allocated rating of 0.900 not quite as favourable as your 0.842.

I also follow the line re racing sails. At the momment I am still using as new Kemp dacrons but will be considering laminate headsails in the future for racing.

Your comments have given me a little more confidence than I had. The thing is, I still fancy something faster . When I bought the fulmar 5 years ago it fitted the bill absolutely . Safe, good sea boat for young family and nervous wife. Children now not that keen, wife , well not the most important thing in her life . It still is a great boat and looks after me, will take me anywhere I am likely to go but its this racing thing and I do follow entirely the length of race down wind vs upwind distances.

In reality a change is pretty unlikely given the weakness of sterling and any alternative is likely to be French If I could sell! . Looks like I will have to stick and carry on having the same sort of fun- Or go and crew on some faster boats , could be dangerous might get even more hooked.

Howard
 
If I had been sailing under a rating of .842 rather than .900 at a regatta last year I would have had a string of 1st and a trophy rather that a string of 2nd /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
Of course we've no idea what sail configuration that Fulmar was using, might have rated with a small headsail, or no spinnaker.

It was just the only Fulmar rating I could find with a quick search, and I did think it low, as I think most people would reccon the fulmar quicker than an impala!

If you were going to change without intending to add too many pound coins to the equation then I would look at a sigma 33. Has the bonus of a bit of resurgance at the moment. They lost their class start at Cowes a couple of years back, but in 2008 (nearly wrote this year!) so many entered that they were all put into one IRC class racing off the same handicap with no other boats, even though it was too late to change the name of the class. Same thing happened with the 38s, although it's worth pointing out that most of those boats are now owned and run by charter companies.
Also seem to do ok under IRC (at least against smilar rated boats) as this year's hamble winter series proved. And will probably come with a few shiny sails to try!
 
you seem to be enjoying the same sort of thing that I am in my Moody 336 and puzzling about exactly the same questions. Conclusion I've come to is that handicaps are only really workable within a narrow range eg comparing your Fulmar with my Moody assuming my boat had a fin keel. Once you start adding dissimilar boats into the mix then you will find that some days and some courses favour one but not the other.

I race against a JOD35 (believe it or not) , a 45 ft Froggie fin keeler and a Dehler 36 amongst others. If its blowey and with lots of beating, they dont stand a chance on handicap but if its light winds and spring tides, they can often clear the course in half my elapsed time. This is under PY and it will be the same under IRC because whats really needed is handicaps that alter according to conditions.

Conclusion? Either go one design or chose a fairly consistent fleet (similar sizes, similar age) and buy a boat that fits in the middle. Dont know if our racing guru Flaming will agree with this but its my conclusions

I wouldnt want a situation where I couldnt win nor one where my handicap was such that I would win sailed badly
 
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I race against a JOD35 (believe it or not) , a 45 ft Froggie fin keeler and a Dehler 36 amongst others. If its blowey and with lots of beating, they dont stand a chance on handicap but if its light winds and spring tides, they can often clear the course in half my elapsed time. This is under PY and it will be the same under IRC because whats really needed is handicaps that alter according to conditions.

Conclusion? Either go one design or chose a fairly consistent fleet (similar sizes, similar age) and buy a boat that fits in the middle. Dont know if our racing guru Flaming will agree with this but its my conclusions



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Spot on!

We've come to the exact same conclusion, in our case we have issues beating the IRC one off's (basically impossible) but with the normal fleet of cruiser racers we have some really good racing.
 
The SCODs, Folkboats and Contessas do rather well in the Round the Island Race, all old 50's designs. I think a Scod has won the Silver Bowl two years ago.
Mikado, a 1904 Fife, has come 2nd at Cowes, class 7 for many years, and finally claimed first last year. Not bad for a 104 year old! It has a good rating but often gets over the line first too.

For most of these older designs you need a bit more wind than the fin and skeg brigade, but its encouraging anyway!
 
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The SCODs, Folkboats and Contessas do rather well in the Round the Island Race

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That's mainly because there's a certain speed for the RTIR that is optimal to hit the right tides on the way around and that suits these boats particularly well.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Winsome an S&S 1973 won Sydney Hobart this year

[/ QUOTE ]Yes but they are great boats.

IRC or any rating system will only work in average conditions, without tides and across a limited boat size range. The tide is a real handicap killer. beating into a few knots of tide will throw the handicap into the bin.
 
Exactly. We once won a big local race when we found ourselves on the wrong downtide side of the start line in really weak winds. Nothing we could do but anchor (itself an experience with the rest of the fleet drifting down towards you) and it took best part of half an hour before we could get across the start line to turn round and to start the race. So we then drifted off towards the downtide mark some distance away. The beauty of this was that we arrived there just as the tide was turning when all the fast boats had been swept miles past (the mark was a channel buoy in deepish water). With a building breeze now against tide we made good progress back towards the line. Despite being the smallest boat there and a bilge keeler to boot we won. You should have heard the comments from the IRC brigade./forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

So you see you can win in anything if conditions favour you, and as you say the big issue is the tide.
 
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