Southland Sailing : A New Class Set Up for Older IOR-Rated Boats

The complicated and expensive International Offshore Rule rating system has long been noted for chasing ocean racing yachts into the less demanding Performance Handicap Racing Fleet (PHRF), especially as they get older.

As a result, in most regattas PHRF yachts are far more numerous than the so-called IOR “Grand Prix” yachts.

To halt this trend, the Southern California Ocean Racing Assn. (SCORA), which governs the local IOR classes, has come up with a new class called SCORA 81.

To qualify, yachts must have an IOR certificate hull date of 1981 or earlier. In 1988 the hull date will be 1982, in 1989 it must be 1983, and so on.

It is expected that the new class will be used primarily in major regattas such as the Long Beach Race Week, the Newport Harbor Yacht Club Ahmanson series and the SCORA championships as a second class in conjunction with the Grand Prix yachts.

“We are trying to keep our IOR fleet active without having them revert to an arbitrary handicap system such as PHRF to remain competitive,” said Phil Murray, a SCORA director and a member of the United States Yacht Racing Union (USYRU) IOR Committee.

Murray said that the recent Long Beach Race Week, exclusively for IOR ratings, was a good example of the problem and why the new SCORA 81 class is being formed. There were 34 IOR yachts competing in Race Week and just one of them could have been eligible for the SCORA 81 class. That was Bingo, a highly modified CF-37.

Boat owners who had competed in previous years were polled as to why they did not enter this year, and almost 100% responded that they did not believe they would be competitive with the newer Grand Prix boats and did not want to race for nothing.

Murray said that IOR has been around for many years and most of the bugs have been ironed out.

SCORA plans to introduce the SCORA 81 class at the IOR championship regatta Nov. 7-8 at Balboa Yacht Club.