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Great Lakes IRC Latest News
Spring IRC Measurement The IRC Lake Ontario Fleet executive is planning a number of weighing and measurement sessions for all regions of Lake Ontario this spring. This year IRC Lake Ontario will be subsidizing the process by covering the cost of scale rental for a number of these sessions. Please contact one of our three regional measurers to be added to the measurement list. Our measurer contact information may be found at www.lorc.org under IRC. We will be announcing dates and locations for measurement sessions in the next few weeks. Please contact our Chief Measurer John Crawley at jccrawley@gmail.com for more information. IRC Event and Series Scoring for 2012 Season We are also pleased to announce that a new scoring system will be in use this year for our IRC Boat of the Year award. The Lake Ontario executive has been working on this change for the last few months in the desire to make this award a little more objective. To this aim we have created a list of eligible events divided into three groups. The North Shore Events include the IRC Canadian Championship, Lake Ontario Championship Series and IRC Toronto Fall Series. The South Shore Events include the IRC Great Lakes Championship and LYRA Course Racing. The Offshore Events include the Susan Hood, Lake Ontario 300 and the Freeman Cup. From these three groups a boat must compete in a minimum of five events to be eligible and at least one event in each of the three groups must be attended to be eligible for Boat of the Year standing. It is our intent to encourage IRC participation at events all around Lake Ontario and to encourage participants to attend a diversity of events to qualify for this award. All other individual regatta's and series will be scored in a similar fashion to what they have been in the past number of seasons with a few minor adjustments to make it easier for boats to qualify for standing. The three-event Lake Ontario Championship Series will again be 70% of races run to count with all tie breakers in effect. The IRC Fall Series will be scored as a best two-of-three series with all tie breakers in effect with the one day QCYC Open Regatta counted as one event. We also have a number of excellent IRC sanctioned regional events this year including the RHYC's Rock the Hammer and the BHYC's Bronte Rocks regatta. They will be scored in standard IRC time-on-time. It is our intent to have a minimum of two divisions at all offshore, regional and fall series events with four divisions anticipated for the Canadians, Great Lakes and the three Lake Ontario Championship events. We wish to keep the racing close and competitive for our entire IRC fleet so we will attempt to divide the fleet into more divisions as numbers allow. Both the IRC Canadians and IRC Great Lakes events will be scored IRC time-on-time for divisional standing with the overall winner declared based on the time-on-distance calculation in the same way it was done at last years IRC North American Championship. We feel this is the fairest way to declare an overall champion at these championship events. IRC Lake Ontario Championship Series For 2012 we are converting the IRC Lake Ontario Championship Series, which this year includes the ABYC Open Regatta, RCYC Open Regatta and PCYC Open Regatta, into a high point scoring system for series standing. Individual events will be scored in normal IRC time-on-time as always but for series scoring the results will be converted to a high point system. This is being done primarily to allow host clubs the flexibility to run our divisions on different length races and possibly even different circles as required. With the addition of our new IRC 4 division, for small boats like the C&C 27 fleet etc, our IRC fleet is getting ever more diverse with an ever growing range of speed potential. This change allows our host clubs/events to create the best possible racing for all our IRC participants. IRC Regional Membership and New Decal Program Again this year we are pleased to announce that, with the cooperation of the CYA, you will automatically become a member of the International IRC Owners Association, Lake Ontario Fleet with the processing of your IRC certificate renewal or new application with no additional dues or fee's. In conjunction with this all boat owners will be receiving a 2012 IRC member transom decal to affix to your IRC measured boat. We suggest placement at the top corner of the transom on the starboard side but that is only a recommendation. Also, we have had IRC bumper stickers produced so everyone may show there allegiance to the IRC Lake Ontario fleet. These will look good on you car, tow vehicle or trailer. Bumper stickers will be available through all our IRC measurers and regional executive. Please ask any of us for one and we will be pleased to accommodate you. IRC Sail Measurement We are organising sail measurement evenings with local sailmakers and will have an announcement of dates very soon. This will allow everyone with either new or unmeasured sails to have a valid IRC measurement certificate produced for submission with their 2012 rating certificate application or update. Renew Now Expect further updates and announcements in the coming days and weeks. Please renew your IRC certificates now if you have not already and contact our measurement team to book for weighing and measurement. Processing of certificates always takes longer in the spring so please do not delay. For all Canadian members we suggest you submit your certificate renewal through John Crawley to ensure quick processing. The Lake Ontario IRC Executive Committee
Interested in using IRC?
Owners and Organizing Authorities wishing to adopt IRC for their events should contact US-IRC Executive Director Luiz E. Kahl for help with the process luiz@us-irc.org.
The US SAILING Offshore office administers the IRC rule in the US. Yacht owners should contact Eric Baittinger at irc@ussailing.org for help with certificate application or with rating questions.
For all US-IRC latest news, events and seminars check out the US-IRC web site at www.us-irc.org and go racing with us.
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