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Welcome to the MORC Racing website. The Midget Ocean Racing Club was founded in 1954 in New York. Its primary mission was to promote offshore racing and cruising of small boats. The original MORC Rule was a modified version of the existing CCA Rule to accommodate small boats. At that time many small boats were excluded from participating in offshore races. The first boat designed to the MORC rule was a modified 16 foot Bullseye. Over the years, the MORC rule evolved resulting in some very successful boats in the 25-34' range. These boats continue to be potent PHRF or IRC contenders.
Today there are several active MORC stations that continue the tradition of racing offshore in small boats. This website was created as a result of a conference call held with many past and present MORC supporters. The major purpose of this site is to gather interest in further developing the MORC organization and what that might look like. The MORC always was a member run organization.
The Midget Ocean Racing Club is a club and in order to function, it will require boat owners and other supporters to step up and indicate their willingness to participate both financially and with their time and effort. In its day, the rule offered a fair measurement based racing venue for small offshore capable boats.
Today it has the potential to bring together owners and supporters of sailing vessels under 34ft and share experiences participating in offshore events. In order to do this, it will require your active participation. You will need to send information about your boat as well as contact information, and also commit to participate and/or organize a MORC sponsored event. It also will require you to submit information about your local station, if it is active and if your area would be willing to step to the plate to support the growth of the organization by hosting a MORC event in the future.
If you have an active MORC station or a sailboat under 34' that your doing something interesting with, please let me know and send me content or a link to your website. I will be happy to put information on this site. I agreed to compile a list of interested parties and support this website to gauge the interest from the people who own MORC eligible boats.
During our conference calls, the idea of a MORC Mid-Winter regatta and possibly a Fall Regatta was discussed. If you are interested in sponsoring such an event, let me know too. The idea was to make it easy for boat owners to obtain a rating certificate at the events by coming a day early to get measured. If your boat had a MORC Certificate, a simple verification of the configuration would be necessary to compare to the certificate database.
I look very fondly at my past participation as the MORC Western Great Lakes Commodore, and Station 18 Commodore (1988-1993) and participating in many Midwinter and International Regattas. My recollection was that MORC offered some of the best racing on the planet. It would be great to see this happen again.
Great Sailing,
Chris Palabrica
Sailor Bandido Racing
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