The Royal Ocean Racing Club has announced that the Rolex Commodores’ Cup will be held at Cowes between Sunday 25 June and Sunday 2 July 2006.

This popular international team event will be sailed using the IRC rule and the Notice of Race will reflect the corinthian nature of the event.

The RORC is aware of the wide interest in the 2006 Rolex Commodores’ Cup from overseas teams, some of whom are planning to build new boats. With this in mind, the club has announced the rating bands in advance of the full Notice of Race. The bands selected focus on the core of the IRC fleet, both in UK and abroad. The slight narrowing of the rating bands has been made to reduce the fleet rating spread to improve the already high quality racing, and there are likely to be a further narrowing of the bands for 2008. The DLR factor has been slightly increased for the Class 3 boats to take account of the features of the smaller modern racer-cruisers.

The rating bands are as follows

Class 3 0.980- 1.039 DLR not exceeding 215

Class 2 1.040-1.104 DLR not exceeding 200

Class 1 1.105-1.320 DLR not exceeding 200

The rating bands are based on 2005 TCC and the RORC reserves the right to amend these Class limits when TCC 2006 are known.

RORC Commodore Chris Little said: “The Rolex Commodores’ Cup has attracted increasingly competitive entries over the past few years and the event has gone from strength to strength. Our intention is to continue changes that will further enhance the Rolex Commodores’ Cup which is rightly seen as the premier international event sailed under the IRC rule and aimed at the Corinthian sailor.”

The full Notice of Race will be available in October 2005.