International One Design - One-design Principles

One-design Principles

Since its founding, the International Class has remained committed to the tradition of testing sailing skills in equally equipped yachts. The Class' extensive one-design rules endeavor to ensure that the hulls, rigs and sails of the racing yachts are near equal as possible. All International owners agree to honor this Class principle.

With any racing yacht, the largest contributor to variable costs are the sails. A boat with newer sails will almost always have a greater speed potential than a boat with older sails of the same design. To keep costs low and ensure that each boat is racing with the most equal sails possible, the IOD class has evolved a very specific sail purchase program that is required to be implemented by each local fleet. The Class encourages each local fleet to develop sails for their boats that suit the specific characteristics of their local sailing area.

Unlike many other one-design fleets, however, individual boats, are not granted free license on how frequently they replace their sails. Instead, each local fleet votes each year on what sail, if any, will be purchased before a given season. The chosen sail (mainsail, jib or spinnaker) is ordered in a single lot from the local fleet's official sailmaker, who pledges to make them as near equal as possible. No recutting, or use of alternate sails is permitted. Usually fleets adopt a sail purchase schedule that only requires the purchase of one sail per year. The result of this unique sail purchase program is a racing fleet of equally equipped boats that are maintained at a low cost to the individual owners.

To further equalize the playing field during International and Interfleet regattas, a change-boat series is presented by the host fleet. Competitors do not bring their own boats to such an event, rather they are invited to sail in the boats of the host fleet. Boats are rotated after every race, or at some events, each day. To make sure that no competing team gain an advantage through this process, the boats are distributed by random drawing and any local representative is prohibited, by rule, from sailing their own boat.