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Company type | Gentlemen's club |
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Genre | Yachting enthusiasts |
Founded | 1925 |
Headquarters | 20 St James's Place, London , United Kingdom |
Website | www.rorc.org |
The Royal Ocean Racing Club is a club in London with a further clubhouse and office in Cowes, Isle of Wight. It was established in 1925 as the Ocean Racing Club, as a result of a race to the Fastnet Rock from Cowes, finishing in Plymouth. It received royal approval by King George V in November 1931 since when it has been known as the Royal Ocean Racing Club.
RORC was founded to encourage long distance yacht racing and the design, building and navigation of sailing vessels in which speed and seaworthiness are combined. [1]
In co-operation with the offshore racing department of the Yacht Club de France, RORC is responsible for the International Rating Certificate (IRC), the principal international handicap system for yacht racing.
The RORC is the principal organiser of offshore yacht races in the United Kingdom. It runs its own offshore series consisting of multiple races around the English Channel. In addition, it holds inshore racing within the Solent, primarily the Easter Regatta and IRC Nationals.
The following pinnacle events are also run by the RORC:
More recently it has helped establish international races away from the United Kingdom with the assistance of local clubs:
The club has traditionally been based in St James's Place in Mayfair London.
In 2014 the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club of Cowes merged with RORC giving the RORC a more visible presence in Cowes where the majority of its Offshore Races start on the line of the Royal Yacht Squadron. [4] The use of the building itself as a yacht club was established in 1948 by yachtsman Tiny Mitchell. [5]
RORC Rating Office is based in Lymington and the race management team relocated from London to separate offices on Cowes High Street in the 2010s.
Yacht racing is a sailing sport involving sailing yachts and larger sailboats, as distinguished from dinghy racing, which involves open boats. It is composed of multiple yachts, in direct competition, racing around a course marked by buoys or other fixed navigational devices or racing longer distances across open water from point-to-point. It can involve a series of races with buoy racing or multiple legs when point-to-point racing.
A maxi yacht usually refers to a racing yacht of at least 21 metres (70 ft) in length.
Cowes Week is one of the longest-running regular regattas in the world. With 40 daily sailing races, around 500 boats, and 2500 competitors ranging from Olympic and world-class professionals to weekend sailors, it is the largest sailing regatta of its kind in the world. Having started in 1826, the event is held in August each year on the Solent, and is run by Cowes Week Limited in the small town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight.
The Fastnet Race is a biennial offshore yacht race organized by the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) of the United Kingdom with the assistance of the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes and the City of Cherbourg in France.
Jolie Brise is a gaff-rigged pilot cutter built and launched by the Albert Paumelle Yard in Le Havre in 1913 to a design by Alexandre Pâris. After a short career as a pilot boat, owing to steam replacing sail, she became a fishing boat, a racing yacht and a sail training vessel.
The Admiral's Cup was an international yachting regatta. For many years it was known as the unofficial world championship of offshore racing.
The International Offshore Rule (IOR) was a measurement rule for racing sailboats. The IOR evolved from the Cruising Club of America (CCA) rule for racer/cruisers and the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) rule.
The 1979 Fastnet Race was the 28th Royal Ocean Racing Club's Fastnet Race, a yachting race held generally every two years since 1925 on a 605-mile course from Cowes direct to the Fastnet Rock and then to Plymouth via south of the Isles of Scilly. In 1979, it was the climax of the five-race Admiral's Cup competition, as it had been since 1957.
The Royal Corinthian Yacht Club is a watersports organisation based at Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex.
The 2005 Rolex Transatlantic Challenge was celebrated at the 100th anniversary of the 1905 race for the Kaiser's Cup also known as "The Great Ocean Race". In this race, there was a skipper named Charlie Barr who raced the 3-masted schooner called Atlantic across the ocean for nearly 3,000 nautical miles (6,000 km) of the North Atlantic to set a monohull unbeaten record for the 1905 course of exactly only 12 days, 4 hours, 1 minute and 19 seconds.
International Rating Certificate (IRC) is a system of handicapping sailboats and yachts for the purpose of racing. It is managed by the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) in the United Kingdom through their dedicated Rating Office, and the Union Nationale pour la Course au Large (UNCL) in France.
The London Corinthian Sailing Club is based on the river Thames at Hammersmith. Its activities include Dinghy sailing and racing on the river, and yachting in the Solent and further afield, as well as an active social side including 'Club Nights' every Tuesday evening.
The Junior Offshore Group (JOG) is a UK based yacht club that organises offshore yacht races in the UK using IRC handicap system. The upper IRC limit for JOG is currently set at 1.200 and there is no lower limit as long as yachts comply with the relevant World Sailing Organisation Special Regulations category. Aimed at smaller yachts, though the size of the smallest yacht keeps getting bigger as the years go by.
Tiamat is a 40-foot racing yacht that sails out of Dublin Bay, Ireland under the burgee of the Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club.
The Brewin Dolphin Commodores’ Cup is a biennial amateur team sailing regatta first held in 1992. The competition is organised by the Royal Ocean Racing Club consists of a number of events held in the oceans of the Solent, the English Channel and the Isle of Wight. Each team consists of three boats, two of them rated between 1.020 and 1.230 using the IRC rating system and one boat rated above 1.150. As a Corinthian (amateur) event, the boats rated between 1.020 and 1.230 can only have one Category 3 sailor and the boat rated above 1.150 may only have two. The most recent competition was held in 2014 from the 19th to the 26th of July and was won by Ireland.
The sport of sailing involves a variety of competitive sailing formats that are sanctioned through various sailing federations and yacht clubs. Racing disciplines include matches within a fleet of sailing craft, between a pair thereof or among teams. Additionally, there are specialized competitions that include setting speed records. Racing formats include both closed courses and point-to-point contests; they may be in sheltered waters, coast-wise or on the open ocean. Most competitions are held within defined classes or ratings that either entail one type of sailing craft to ensure a contest primarily of skill or rating the sailing craft to create classifications or handicaps.
The Union Nationale pour la Course au Large also called UNCL is a French yacht club
The Transpac 52 (TP52) is a class of yacht used for competitive 52 Super Series yacht racing, and the Audi MedCup previously, besides the world championship of the class. The class is recognised by the International Sailing Federation which entitles the class to hold an Official World Championships.
Handicap forms for sailing vessels in sailing races have varied throughout history, and they also vary by country, and by sailing organisation. Sailing handicap standards exist internationally, nationally, and within individual sailing clubs.
Passage records have been sanctioned, since 1972, by the World Sailing Speed Record Council (WSSRC).