Level Rule

 Would it really be so backward looking if the good bits of various rules like the IACC, the Metre boats, Restricted classes, Box and even the much maligned IOR, we’re combined into a new Universal Rule, that could be used for offshore racing, inshore racing, club racing and even your actual high and mighty America’s Cup? 

A rating rule doesn’t have to be size specific or use specific. It can even allow the growth, once again - under a common formula, of boats with and without interiors, like some of the Metre boat classes used to do. What multi purpose opportunities could that engender? I know many of you will think it can’t be done, but that may be just because you’ve gotten used to the fact that it hasn’t been done for such a long time.

Here racing out of San Diego is part of the fleet of challengers assembled to defeat the Americans in the first event to use the IACC rule. 100 boats to these rules were registered for competition in the AC period 1991 thru 2007 ( a couple less than 100 were actually built) but it’s still an impressive number. 

But better rule management and a great deal less paranoia about how the rule could be used, could have allowed it to grow into a wider cross section of boat sizes and types.  For example, a simple minimum beam limit to go with the existing maximum beam limit, might have produced a very effective 40ft, or so, day racing class. The problem was, just as now, the ruling America’s Cup hierarchy, want complete control and ownership of everything to do with the event, including the rules under which the boats are designed.