Bayview Mackinac Race to adopt ORC Rating Rule

Racecourse action at the start of the 2019 Bayview Mackinac Race © Images courtesy of Martin Chumiecki/Element Photography

With the New Year, I am pleased to announce that registration is open for the 2021 Bayview Mackinac Race. Please visit www.bycmack.com for more information and to begin your registration.

We are all painfully aware that 2020 was perhaps the most unusual year any of us has experienced, yet Bayview Yacht Club still managed to conduct the Mackinac Race in fine fashion, thanks to the dedicated and relentless work of our staff and volunteers. As 2021 dawns, it is not clear what the pandemic might bring, but please know that it is fully our intention to meet you all at the south end of Lake Huron to head north together come July 24, 2021.

Bayview Yacht Club and the Mackinac Race Authority are pleased to announce that it will adopt the Offshore Race Congress (ORC) Rating System to score the 97th consecutive Bayview Mackinac Race. This decision is in conjunction with Chicago Yacht Club, which is making the same change for its Race to Mackinac.

The ORC Rating System uses science and technology to develop a boat's handicap to allow fair racing between dissimilar boats. By entering specific measurements into computer software, ORC measures how a racing crew can reach their boat's theoretical performance potential in various wind conditions. This Velocity Prediction Program (VPP) allows the race organizers to correct the elapsed time of competing boats to score them on the same level.

Tom Burleson, Chairman of the Mackinac Race Authority, offers the following on this change:

"The adoption of the ORC Rating System will offer competitors a handicap rule with full transparency that is more widely used in premier regattas like the Bayview Mackinac Race throughout North America and Worldwide. The expectation is that competitors will have a better user experience, access to more resources, and a race with a rating rule that is transparent and easy to understand at the same, or in many cases lower, costs."

Clear your calendar, register your boat, and get ready to race!

For more information visit www.bycmack.com.