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Jostein Hellerud with a website that compares the properties of sailboats
20 April 2026 · 9 min · 423 views
Man speaks passionately in sailing-themed room
What this video covers
A Norwegian programmer named Jostein Hellerud built a free hobby website that pulls data from the ORC database and presents sailboat rating certificates in a searchable, comparable format.0:08 The site lets sailors look up any registered boat by sail number, compare ORC polar speed data across wind angles and wind speeds, and run informal head-to-head comparisons between boats — what Hellerud calls a "mini-regatta."0:31 ORC certificates contain theoretical boat speeds for every wind angle and wind speed, data that most sailors ignore but that reveals, for example, whether to sail lower on a run in light air, when to plane, and how high to point upwind as breeze builds.1:01 The site surfaces those numbers as graphs and tables.1:34 Hellerud notes the ORC database has data-quality inconsistencies — identical boat models sometimes show different mast heights, beam, or displacement — and recommends cross-checking the site's output against the original paper certificate, which includes a hull drawing that can visually expose measurement errors.7:35 The site is free to use.6:46 The practical takeaway: ORC polar data already tells a sailor how fast their boat should go in any condition; the challenge is sailing to that number.
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