When best intentions go astray

Stories from the past bring to mind the quote from philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In this story from the past, yacht designer and past Seahorse magazine editor Julian Everitt reflects on the demise of the International Offshore Rule (IOR) – introduced in the 1960s – for handicap racing on a worldwide level:

“Why did the IOR die?” The answer is surprisingly simple and has little to do with economic downturns, crazy escalating costs, or the perception that the boats were unseaworthy and slow.

The very people, the members of the International Technical Committee (ITC), who were tasked to protect and develop the rule for the benefit of the owners, signed the death warrant some six years before the beast was finally deemed extinct.

It wasn’t a deliberate act, by any means, it was just kind of allowed to happen as interests grew in the development of a new ‘super’ rule that would cure all the ‘ills’ of offshore handicapping. It was called IMS. The International Measurement System.

IMS was very much an American-based initiative formulated by a burgeoning interest in the power of computers as envisioned by idealists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This belief in a ‘perfect’ system filtered into the ITC who then increasingly believed that IMS could replace IOR as THE rule for Grand Prix Offshore Racing.

At a stroke, IMS was perceived as a handicapping system that would allow the return of ‘wholesome’ cruiser racers to the Grand Prix level.

And so, the scene was set for a showdown between the two rules. Funnily enough, however, this ‘conflict’ largely took place behind closed doors – the closed doors of the International Technical Committee.

This erstwhile group of designers and boffins had done a reasonable job of helping to develop the original, Olin Stephens/Dick Carter/ van de Stadt created Mk 1 IOR, into an ever more complex Mk III IOR.

They had dealt with the slings and arrows of ‘cat’ rigs, unballasted daggerboards, extreme overhangs, bumps, chines and many other rule dodgers thrown at it by a vast army of new, young designers. The rule really was the ultimate mathematical, but organic and holistic challenge imaginable, and so it required a lot of policing and an awful lot of tweaking. – Read on