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It might just be a coincidence, but the release last Thursday by the Rating Office of the Royal Ocean Racing Club of its “updated” Measurement Manual for IRC handicaps brought the protracted debate over the rating of Sydney-Hobart winner Celestial immediately to mind.
Maybe that was their intention. The notion that the RORC could now feel the need to bolster its own credentials as a rating agency is difficult to avoid. The wording of the manual is a curious mixture. Some sentences read as self-congratulation; others more like attempts by the RORC to relieve themselves of direct responsibility for the veracity of the ratings they themselves finally determine.
Thus, on the one hand, we have this:
“The IRC Rating Authority takes great care in checking the data supplied, even for standard certificates … The measurer’s responsibility is to achieve a fair and accurate result, rather than the optimum result for the particular owner.”
But, on the other:
“The international IRC rating rule has always been a self-measurement system, and official measurement is not a rule requirement unless the boat needs an Endorsed IRC certificate.”
The Notice of Race for the Sydney-Hobart does require, at 3.3 (a) (i)), that IRC boats may only enter if they have “a current, valid Endorsed IRC Certificate”. That compulsory endorsement is…
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