Source: Afloat
The Royal Ocean Racing Club’s rating office in London has given a ringing endorsement of the dual scoring system employed at Irish regattas and reports of its findings when it visited Ireland’s biggest regatta in July. The four clubs in Dun Laoghaire on Dublin Bay jointly hosted the biennial Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta for a large fleet including around 120 IRC boats. Emma Smith and Jenny Howells attended the event on behalf of the RORC Rating Office and were able to provide on-site IRC assistance to the organisers, meet owners and crews, and watch some of the racing on the water. It was also interesting to see dual-scoring with ECHO (the Irish national handicap system) in action.
ECHO is a progressive handicapping system, so the ECHO TCC changes after every race to reflect actual performance; this system allows everyone to race together but ensures that the keen racers don’t win under both systems. For instance, at this event, the IRC class 2 and overall IRC winner “Checkmate XV” saw her ECHO TCC increase from 1.012 to 1.121 over six races, leaving her 7th overall in ECHO 2. There are clear advantages to club racing of dual scoring between Spinlock IRC and a national or local handicap system which you can read about on the RORC Rating website.
