In a multi-year effort, International One-Design Class leaders helped effect a World Sailing rules change in the fall of 2019 to make it more practical for large, heavy displacement classes of boats including the IOD to meet requirements to hold world championship events.

Before November 2019, at least 20 entries were required to legitimize naming the IOD class championship a world title event, which as anyone familiar with the borrowed-boat-format regatta knows is a stretch anywhere outside of Northeast Harbor. Thanks to a sustained IOD World Class Association effort to revise World Sailing Regulation 10b, the class now fits the rule: 12 entries now satisfy the requirement for boats of the IOD’s length (9 to 12 meters) if the boat weighs more than 2,000 kilograms.

The catalyst for making the change was a conversation in 2016 between class president Charlie van Voorhis and U.S. rep (and subsequently chair) on the World Sailing Equipment Committee, Dina Kowalyshyn. (Former class officer Kin Yellott had started the conversation with Kowalyshyn three years earlier!) The rule setting the threshold for entries had been written with lighter boats in mind, and Kowalyshyn, a naval architect from Annapolis, Md., suggested adding displacement to the equation.

While the regulation change took a few years and persistent attention from the IOD World Class rep Peter Rugg, last fall in Bermuda at the organization’s annual conference, support from World Sailing VP Gary Jobson, Kowalyshyn, and others finally resulted in a positive vote at the November 2019 conference in Bermuda.

Also benefiting from the rule change are heavy-displacement classes including the 12-, 8-, and 6-Meter classes, the J/111 and Farr 40, among others.