2015 IOM World championship
by WVYC Member, Peter Stevens

A few years ago, I thought I’d like get back into competitive sailing but wasn’t really interested in racing on big boats anymore. Having followed the Foghorn’s reports on the progress of the T-37 sailors at the club, I decided to see what kind of rc sailing was available on Vancouver Island.

Turned out that the International One Metre was being actively campaigned by a relatively large group of sailors, from Campbell River, Hornby Island, Nanaimo, Saltspring Island and the greater Victoria area. The total number of consistently campaigned boats is around 25, and the local regattas generally include all of those boats, plus a large contingent of Washington based skippers with a few of the top California sailors as well.

Unlike the T-37, the IOM doesn’t arrive at your doorstep as complete, ready to build kit. The design is essentially a box rule, max keel weight, minimum hull weight, 3 tightly measured rig sizes, and the hull is one metre long. There are several other parameters such as the hull can only be glass or wood, the only carbon allowed is for the keel fin and rudder, spars can only be alloy or wood. The boat has three rigs, A,B, and C, allowing the boat to be sailed in over 35 knots. My current hull and fins are built in New Zealand, sails are from NZ and the UK, rigging is from the UK, USA and Tasmania, and the masts are from France. And the price is quite a bit steeper than a T-37, but it is a different kind of boat. Assembling the boat is really an international effort and reflects on the class’s broad appeal around the world.

The class is sailed in 30 + countries around the world. In Canada, there are 4-5 major events a year on top of the weekly racing that takes place most months of the year depending on the location. With the results of the major events comes a ranking system that determines the nationwide standings that are used to seed skippers in a World or Euro Championship. Every country in the world with an IOM class association follows these guidelines, thus anyone can compete with the selection to the World’s as a goal, or be more than happy, racing at their local regattas.

Over the two year process (the World’s are held every two years) of sailing in ranking events here and in the US, I managed to accumulate enough points to be in the conversation concerning which Canadian skippers would qualify. Canada is allotted two slots out of the maximum 76 berths available, the number being based on the active class size in Canada (60-70 fully campaigned, 200+ registered). There are 4000+ IOM’s raced worldwide, hence the small allotment for Canada.

The World’s are less than a month away. I have no expectations going into the regatta, most of the competitor’s have been in the rc game for decades, I fully expect to be at the bottom of the learning curve, but there’s no better place to continue the process than with the world’s best.

http://www.usaiomworlds.com