Getting an IRC Certificate

If you are sick of being penalised for sailing well under PHS, perhaps it's worth getting your boat weighed and measured. By Roger McMillan.

Most club racers have had the experience. You go out twilighting, the conditions suit your sails perfectly, the crew is on a bit of a roll and you end up winning by a country mile. Which means the handicapper slugs you heavily and next week you’re giving time to a much quicker boat.

PHS is a good system for club racing, but it handicaps your performance not your boat. A few good races early in the season can mean you have little chance of winning the series.

If you are racing under IRC or ORCi, however, your handicap doesn’t change unless you change something on the boat. If you sail well all season, you have a good chance of taking home some silverware.

An added advantage of having an IRC certificate is that most major regattas, like Hamilton Island Race Week, Victoria Week and Geographe Race Week, have several IRC divisions, including IRC cruising. Instead of being at the whim of a handicapper who has to coordinate PHS data from dozens of different clubs and match boats of widely differing ages, shapes and sizes, your destiny is in your own hands.

For all the above reasons, an IRC certificate can also add value to your boat when you sell it. All other things being equal, a prospective buyer will probably chose the boat with a valid IRC certificate over one that can only be raced under PHS.

So how does the average club racer go about getting an IRC certificate? It’s actually not hard, not too expensive and the weighing and measuring only has to be done once.

What is IRC?

As an over-simplified explanation, IRC uses a formula based on the length, weight, draft and sail area of a boat to determine how fast it should go. The boat is then giving a rating.

To determine whether boat A or boat B was sailed better in a given race, their elapsed times are multiplied by their rating to determine a corrected time. Technically, the boat with the faster corrected time was sailed better against its theoretical potential, and therefore it wins. (Memo to rating tragics - before you send abusive emails, remember that I said this was an over-simplified explanation!)

The first step to getting your IRC certificate is to contact your local measurer. A full list of the 20 or so qualified IRC measurers can be found on the Yachting Australia website. Click on Sports Services and then IRC.

Weighing it up

The measurer will arrange a time for your boat to be weighed and measured. According to Ian Ball, who has been doing IRC measuring in Western Australia for several years, it makes sense to synchronise the actual measurement process, particularly weighing, with other work being done on the boat, to minimise lifting costs. The annual antifouling is the logical time.

If the boat is craned out of the water, the crane’s scales will give an accurate weight. If the yard has a travel lift, load cells are used. Your measurer will know all this.

Your boat has to be weighed “empty” so you need to take out lifejackets, hand-held radios, pots and pans, fuel containers and anything else that would fall out if the boat was up-ended and shaken. Fuel and water tanks should be as empty as possible.

You can obviously help the measurer and reduce the time taken by getting all this prep work done well before the agreed haul-out time.

As far as total measuring time is concerned, Ian Ball says, “Usually three to four hours more than covers the process from go to whoa. I’ll typically break it into two sessions - one being weight, overhangs, draft and LOA. The other being sails, rig and beam.”

Sails can be measured on a lawn at the yacht club, or at your local sailmaker’s loft. Most sailmakers are happy to have the measuring done in their loft (provided plenty of notice is given) as it’s an excellent chance for them to point out why you need a new set.

Another option

You don’t actually have to get your boat weighed and measured. If it’s a standard design, you can go to the IRC website where you are likely to find most of the data the measurer needs. However, YA’s Director of Sports Services, Glen Stanaway cautions against this approach.

“Standard class data is ‘the lowest ever recorded’ for a boat in that class, anywhere in the world. Over years of weighing one-designs like Sydney 38 and Farr 40s, we discovered that they will always be heavier, the draft less and the sails smaller than the listed data. This means if you use the standard data you are probably going to get a worse rating than if you have your boat weighed and measured.”

How much?

The actual weighing and measurement process isn’t as expensive as you might think. If you use a crane to haul the boat out for its annual maintenance anyway, it doesn’t cost any more to get the weight recorded.

In some areas, such as Adelaide and Melbourne, there are organised “weigh days” where boat owners can share the cost. Often clubs who have an active keelboat racing fleet will co-ordinate a measurer to do a number of boats at the same time.

Your measurer may or may not charge a fee. Some do it to supplement their pensions, and will charge you an hourly rate, which varies around the country. Others will do it for nothing - sometimes. One measurer we spoke to says he charges “dickheads” full price but if you’re a valued club member who can be counted on to show up at the annual busy bee, he’ll do it for a slab of beer. Sometimes it does pay to be one of the “good guys”.

If you live outside the metro areas, it’s reasonable to expect to pay the measurer’s travelling costs, if there isn’t a local person certified to do the job. For example, Ian Ball does most of his work in Perth but has also measured yachts as far away as Albany, which is five hours drive.

The cost of the certificate itself depends on the size of your boat. YA charges $28.50 + GST per metre for the initial certificate and $27.50 + GST per metre for the annual revalidation. They also offer an end-of-season special of 50% off for the last three months of the year. So if you only want to race under IRC at a regatta that takes place in March, April or May, you can take advantage of that deal.

As I said at the outset, PHS is a good handicap system that suits many club racers. But if you do want to compete in offshore races or regatta weeks, or just want a more accurate measure of how well you are sailing your boat compared with other club members, it’s probably worth a few hours of work at haul-out time, and a few hundred dollars, to get your IRC certificate.