The Offshore Racing Congress (ORC) will have the Annual Meeting of its constituent committees and the ORC Congress starting on 29 October and concluding on 6 November. The Annual Meeting is where submissions for improvement of rules and policies for the coming new year are made from national authorities that manage use of the ORC system in 46 countries around the world. The submissions are first discussed within their topical committees and then reports and recommendations are made by each committee chairman to the ORC Congress, a body composed of a proportional number of delegates representing all countries that use the ORC system.

Approvals are needed from Congress to implement changes to ORC rules and policies for 2023. This year there were 40 submissions made from 10 nations and the ORC Management Committee for consideration by six ORC committees on topics such as details of boat and spar measurements, championship event formats, scoring and technical improvements to the ORC Velocity Prediction Program (VPP), the core tool used to determine ORC ratings.

Meetings of the ORC Management Committee are also in the schedule, but are closed for public access. And the final meeting this year of the ORC International Technical Committee (ITC) was held last weekend in Trieste, Italy, and their report and recommendations will be made at the Congress meeting.

Those interested in participating as an observer to any of the public meetings must register on the online form here: https://www.orc.org/index.asp?id=71
Registered observers will receive the Zoom credentials needed to access the meetings of their choice.

"Our system is open and transparent and is used by many boat types, from Sportboats to Superyachts," said ORC Chairman Bruno Finzi. "Through the submission process we collect feedback on how to improve the system and now we invite observers to see how our committees deliberate on these issues.

"We feel this is important so that anyone in the ORC community - from the 9000 boats that have been issued ORC certificates this year, the hundreds of regatta managers that manage and score races, or anyone else who has a general interest – may have the opportunity to see and hear how our input and improvement process works."