In less than one week and for the first time in 24 years an ORC World Championship will commence at the New York Yacht Club in Newport, Rhode Island. This event, co-organized with the Offshore Racing Congress (ORC), features competitive inshore and offshore racing among 43 yachts from throughout the US and around the world that range in size from 30 to 52 feet in length. 

Three classes are competing for separate ORC World Champion titles, along with that a Maxi Class of yachts 66 to 74 feet in length competing for a North American Champion title. ORC Classes B and C have been combined to produce both World Champion and North American titles in these classes. Awards will also be made for all-amateur Corinthian and all-Female teams.

Activities for the ORC World Championship will start with three days of Registration and Inspections held over Friday-Sunday September 27-29, with Sunday offering a Practice Race and the Opening Ceremony.

Racing starts on Monday September 30 with a Long Offshore race of 24-36 hours in length held in Atlantic waters south of the main venue at NYYC’s Harbour Court in Newport. The exact course for each class will be announced prior to the start and will be based on the target completion times of the entries. 

ORC’s innovative Weather Routing Scoring (WRS) using wind and tidal current models provided in cooperation with PredictWind will be used to score both this Long Offshore race and the Short Offshore race held on Friday October 4th. This method promises fair results for a fleet of dissimilar boats that may encounter varied conditions of wind and current on their portions of the race course. Results from both these races will not be discardable in the final scores.

The Maxis will not compete in this Long Offshore race but will start their inshore race series on Tuesday, October 1st when the remainder of the fleet is finishing and recuperating from their long race.

For the ORC classes Inshore racing starts on Wednesday October 2, continues on Thursday and concludes on Saturday October 5th, the final day of the event. Races will be in a Windward/Leeward format and be held on two separate course areas set in Narragansett Bay or Rhode Island Sound. Maxi class entries will sail inshore or near-shore coastal courses on all their race days.

Inshore and near-shore race courses will be scored using ORC’s Polar Curve Scoring (PCS), the most accurate possible scoring method for VPP-based handicapping. An explanation of PCS is found at this link.

“We have an active and vibrant community of offshore-capable racing yachts in the US,” said Matt Gallagher, Regatta Chairman. “The fleet at this event represents some of the most talented teams in the game and will be a quite suitable test for awarding ORC World Champion titles. We look forward to the start of racing next week.”

“The US has been a very important part of ORC history, in fact US Sailing was a founding member of ORC 55 years ago,” said Bruno Finzi, Chairman of ORC. “We therefore look forward to having World Championship-level racing come back to the US after many years and wish all teams the very best in their preparations for next week.”