ORR rating stuff

As with most sailboat races, the Pacific Cup race uses a handicap system to accommodate the large variety of boats that participate in the race.  Most of the SF Bay local races are handicapped using PHRF (Performance Handicap Racing Fleet).  You submit a form with measurements of your boat and sails to the local YRA office and they issue your PHRF rating, both upwind and downwind.  You can do these measurements yourself and/or use published data from the manufacturer.  PacCup being a mostly downwind race uses your boat's downwind rating.  Unfortunately, or fortunately depending how you look at it, our boat is too fast downwind and below the rating cutoff to participate in PHRF divisions.  As a result we are required to race in an ORR (Offshore Racing Rule) division.  While PHRF and ORR are "managed" by US Sailing, ORR is much more detailed in the measurement process requiring the services of a US Sailing certified measurer for the boat and the sails.  I was able to get our sails (main, largest head sail, and largest spinnaker) measured at a local sail loft and they provided the official US Sailing measurement forms.  The boat measurements were a bit more complicated.  We had to take the boat over the Richmond marina to have an "incline" performed on the boat.

Our local US Sailing measurer taking overhand measurements.

Outriggers installed and then weights added to calculate the boat's righting angle (sound like black magic math to me).  The inboard ends of the outriggers are up against stanchions and the outboard ends are held by halyards.  Weights are then added to the end of the outrigger to heel the boat.  They have a water filled tube running from side to side on the boat to measure level and heel.

This was phase one.  Later we had to take the boat over to Berkeley marina to have the boat weighed and the underwater appendages (prop, shaft, and strut) measured.  Fortunately, the race holds weighing events where they schedule multiple boats to maximize use of the travel lift and I-frame with the weight sensor.  Once again, like we did for the incline, we had to remove everything from the boat.  To get the I-frame that holds the weight sensor and the straps that fit under the boat positioned properly we had to remove the backstay. 

We pretty much had to max out the lift on the travel lift to get the boat completely out of the water (sorry didn't get a picture of that).  As it was about an inch of the bulb on the bottom of the keel was still in the water - although as the tide was rapidly falling, it wasn't long until the entire boat was clear of the water.

Getting the final measurements of the prop, shaft, and strut.

The final number?  14,297.2 pounds.  That's 397 pounds more than J-Boats published weight for a J120.  All this data now gets sent to US Sailing who will then issue our certified ORR rating.  Once we have that we can forward that form to our local PHRF office and they will issue a certified PHRF rating as well.  FINALLY, all that get's submitted to the PacCup race committee and based on the other boats entered they can determine race divisions.  Once we're in a divsion we'll know our start date - likely July 11th give or take.  Five months to go!