Netherlands

445 Dutch boats across 15 international events, led by AEROMAX at 18.5% — power-efficient upwind hulls anchoring the fleet ahead of IRONWIND and KEELFLEX, North Sea-bred breadth across the international circuit.

Kinship

Every fleet has a fingerprint.

From the Solent’s tide-lines to the Aegean Meltemia — find your waters.

 Hidden Shape

11 archetypes.
How this country's fleet clusters before the results arrive.

How every Dutch boat clusters, before the results arrive.
Kinship

A broadly-campaigning fleet with an upwind-powered core.

The Netherlands' fleet spans 445 boats racing across the North Sea, Baltic, Mediterranean championship circuits, and the classic UK and Atlantic offshore events under Watersportverbond governance — a broadly-campaigning fleet led by the power-efficient AEROMAX archetype at the top, with the 2026 ORC Double-Handed World Championship raced on home North Sea waters in May.

445
boats
15
events
116
races
Domestic competitive fleet · as of 2026-06-21

ORC Authority: Watersportverbond

The Watersportverbond governs a fleet that campaigns broadly rather than staying local. Dutch boats race the North Sea domestically, head south for Mediterranean championships, and remain regulars at the Rolex Fastnet Race, the RORC offshore circuit, and the Baltic. The Netherlands fields J/Boats, X-Yachts, Dehler, and Beneteau production lines alongside a long tail of one-off builds — and the way those platforms cluster has a clear leading band: AEROMAX, the power-efficient upwind hybrid, carries the largest single share at roughly one boat in five.

AEROMAX leads the Dutch archetype distribution. AEROMAX heads the fleet at 18.5% (82 boats) — power-efficiency hybrids with strong upwind drive and moderate displacement — with IRONWIND at 11.5% (51 boats) and KEELFLEX at 10.4% (46 boats) behind, and the three at the top combining to 40.4%. Johnstone R anchors the drawing-board ledger at 12.2% (the most-common voice, still below the 15% dominance threshold), with Judel-Vrolijk following at 8.5% — a J/Boats production presence sharing the leaderboard with the long-running German offshore design partnership that has shaped a generation of Dutch grand-prix entries.

The world championship came home in May. Fifteen Watersportverbond-registered boats raced the ORC Double-Handed World Championship on North Sea waters (May 21–22, 2026) — the largest Dutch race group at any single international event in the archive, and the majority of the 26 boats with scored observations at the event. Two offshore tests per class — a short course of roughly 32–40 nautical miles and a long course of roughly 193–230 — scored on time-on-time with ECMWF weather routing.

At a glance

Netherlands — structural profile.

Scope
445 boats
431 ORC-rated · 14 mapped-IRC
Top 3 archetypes
  1. AEROMAX — 82 boats (18.4%)
  2. IRONWIND — 51 boats (11.5%)
  3. KEELFLEX — 46 boats (10.3%)
Eleven canonical performance archetypes cluster the fleet by dimensional signature. See the full map →
Top designer cluster
Johnstone R
54 boats (12.1%) — the most-represented design voice in this fleet.

Counts and archetype assignments above are measured from the current corpus. Commentary below is interpretive.

National fleet view · as of 2026-06-21
Hidden Shape

The shape of the Dutch fleet.

445 Dutch boats across 11 archetypes — led by AEROMAX at 18.5%, with IRONWIND at 11.5% and KEELFLEX at 10.4% behind. Here's how they cluster, and what the collective signature reveals about how the Netherlands races.

The Dutch Fleet Signature

The Netherlands' fleet leads with the power-efficient, upwind-biased AEROMAX shape ahead of a broad supporting field. AEROMAX leads at 18.4% (82 boats) — power-efficiency hybrids with strong upwind drive and moderate displacement, a shape that rewards the long beats of North Sea and offshore racing. IRONWIND follows at 11.5% (51 boats) with stiff, stable-drive platforms and predictable load behavior, and KEELFLEX sits at 10.3% (46 boats), a narrow-window hull that is fast when perfectly balanced. The three lead archetypes carry 40.4% combined, and the supporting field stays broad — the signature of a fleet that buys across production one-designs and one-off builds, and campaigns from North Sea club racing through Mediterranean and Atlantic offshore circuits.

  • AEROMAX 18.4% · 82 boats
  • IRONWIND 11.5% · 51 boats
  • KEELFLEX 10.3% · 46 boats

Dimension emphasis: Sail Performance · Condition & Tactical

In May 2026, 15 Dutch boats raced the ORC Double-Handed World Championship on home North Sea waters, where Team Heiner 4 (NED 7472, J-109) ran closest to its weather-routed allowance across both scored offshore courses — see what we saw →.

Complete data Latest published view

AEROMAX

Power-efficiency hybrid with strong upwind drive and moderate displacement.

strong upwind · neutral reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 82
Share 18.4%
  • TP52
  • GP42
  • Melges IC37

IRONWIND

Stiff, stable-drive platform with predictable load behavior.

moderate upwind · moderate reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 51
Share 11.5%
  • J/122
  • XP-44
  • Swan 45

KEELFLEX

Narrow stability window; fast when perfectly balanced, punishing when not.

neutral upwind · moderate reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 46
Share 10.3%
  • First 30
  • X-35
  • J/35

STEELCORE

Stiff, stability-positive rigid-platform core with low heel sensitivity.

neutral upwind · neutral reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 45
Share 10.1%
  • First 40
  • Bavaria C42
  • Hanse 388

GRAVITYRUN

Heavy-mode momentum boat with strong downwind power in sustained breeze.

neutral upwind · moderate reaching · strong downwind

Boats 44
Share 9.9%
  • Swan 47
  • C&C 41
  • Sigma 38

GLIDEFORM

Low-drag hull with efficient upwind flow and moderate displacement.

weak upwind · moderate reaching · strong downwind

Boats 42
Share 9.4%
  • J/109
  • Dehler 38
  • Italia 11

DEEPFRAME

Deep-hull efficiency paired with a stiff platform for drag-optimized flow.

neutral upwind · moderate reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 35
Share 7.9%
  • Swan 60
  • Nautor custom
  • ClubSwan 50

HEADFORCE

High righting moment, upwind-biased hull that powers through chop.

strong upwind · weak reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 30
Share 6.7%
  • First 34.7
  • Grand Soleil 37
  • Sun Fast 3300

STORMLINE

Rough-water specialist with a hull shape optimized for steep, short waves.

moderate upwind · strong reaching · moderate downwind

Boats 27
Share 6.1%
  • J/111
  • J/121
  • Fast 40+

STEELFORM

Heavy-displacement hull with strong directional stability.

neutral upwind · neutral reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 23
Share 5.2%
  • J/70
  • Farr 280
  • SB20

AEROBLADE

Light, agile platform optimized for quick acceleration and flat-water speed.

moderate upwind · moderate reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 19
Share 4.3%
  • Class 40
  • IMOCA derivatives
  • Pogo 30
Fleet Stories

The Dutch fleet's signature.

AEROMAX leads the Dutch fleet

AEROMAX is the leading archetype across the classified Dutch fleet at 82 boats (18.5%) — the largest single share and the only archetype above the 15% mark, clear of IRONWIND (11.5%) and KEELFLEX (10.4%) behind it. AEROMAX is the power-efficiency hybrid: strong upwind drive with moderate displacement, a shape that rewards the long beats and pressure-on legs of North Sea and offshore racing. That the Netherlands over-indexes on it says something structural about how the fleet is built — a national preference for upwind-capable, efficiency-first hulls rather than the heavy-mode or rough-water specialists that lead some neighboring fleets.

Johnstone R — the Netherlands' most-common design voice

Across the classified Dutch fleet, Johnstone R is the most-represented designer at 54 boats (12.2%) — the largest single share in a fleet where no board crosses the dominance mark. Judel-Vrolijk follows at 8.5% (38 boats), with the Jeppesen-Nielsen X-Yachts boards and de Ridder behind. The J/Boats production lines — J-109, J-105, J-99, J-35 — carry that share through the Dutch club and offshore fleet, sharing the leaderboard with the German Judel-Vrolijk partnership that has shaped a generation of Dutch grand-prix entries. The drawing-board ledger is broad: market presence, not market command.

Popular Classes

The boats that define Netherlands racing.

J-109 (11)

J/Boats' mid-2000s IRC 35-footer — one-design capable, handicap friendly.

J-105 (8)

The J/Boats 35 that built club asymmetric racing.

First 31.7 (7)

Beneteau's Finot-designed club racer — the backbone of European ORC fleets.

J-99 (7)

The J/Boats short-handed offshore specialist — a Class 40 successor in ORC trim.

J-35 (6)

A racer-cruiser from Tillotson-Pearson.

Selected Race Result

ORC DH Worlds 2026 — Classes A, B, C.

15 of 445 fleet boats competed. 6 races — one short offshore course of roughly 32–40 nautical miles and one long course of roughly 193–230, scored per class on time-on-time with ECMWF weather routing. May 21–22, 2026, on the Dutch contingent's home North Sea waters — the largest Dutch race group at any event in the archive.

Headlines

What the 15-boat Dutch contingent did at the DH Worlds.

Comparative Time

1. TEAM HEINER 4 · +17.9 sec/nm
2. WAVERIDER · +19.6 sec/nm
3. X-ESTEEM · +27.6 sec/nm
Cohort 15 boats

Crew Residual

1. WAVERIDER · 16.9 sec/nm
2. TEAM HEINER 4 · 18.5 sec/nm
3. X-ESTEEM · 26.2 sec/nm
Cohort 15 boats

Event Profile

Courses 32–230 nm offshore
Scoring ToT · ECMWF routing
Dates 2026-05-21/22
Cohort 15 boats
Stories

What we saw at the DH Worlds.

15 Dutch boats raced the ORC Double-Handed World Championship on home North Sea waters — the majority of the 26 boats with scored observations at the event, across one short and one long offshore course per class, scored on time-on-time with ECMWF weather routing. The contingent's Comparative Time and crew-residual numbers tell the story of which two-person crews kept their boats closest to the weather-routed allowance at this running. On both metrics, negative means faster than the rating expects and a stronger result — here every Dutch boat ran positive, so the leaders are the ones with the smallest gap above the allowance.

Performance Verdict

TEAM HEINER 4 ran closest to its weather-routed allowance of the Dutch fifteen.

TEAM HEINER 4 GRAVITYRUN (NED 7472, J-109) posted a +17.9 sec/nm Comparative Time across both scored offshore courses — the lowest delta of the 15-boat Dutch contingent, roughly 31.6 sec/nm clear of the race group median (+49.5). A Johnstone R J-109, it held the smallest gap to its ECMWF weather-routed allowance on the short course and the long course alike, and paired that with the second-smallest crew residual of the Dutch group at 18.5 sec/nm. The verdict is consistency: no Dutch boat got under its allowance at this running, and the boat that came closest did it on both surfaces the event measured.

  • Comp Time: +17.9 sec/nm · lowest of 15 NED boats
  • Margin to cohort median: 31.6 sec/nm · crew residual 18.5, 2nd-smallest
Partial data ORC DH Worlds 2026
Crew-Carried

WAVERIDER held the smallest crew residual in the Dutch race group.

WAVERIDER GLIDEFORM (NED 450, Sunfast 3200) recorded a 16.9 sec/nm crew residual over the two scored races — the narrowest gap between the platform's modeled pace and the crew-delivered result anywhere in the 15-boat Dutch contingent — while sitting second on Comparative Time at +19.6 sec/nm. The hull frame matters here: a 32-foot production double-hander gave away waterline to most of the Dutch entries around it, yet its two-person crew kept the boat tighter to what the platform's physics predicted than any other Dutch crew managed at this running. The result is a crew-versus-platform contrast, not a raw-speed one.

  • Crew residual: 16.9 sec/nm · smallest of 15 NED
  • Comp Time: +19.6 sec/nm · 2nd of 15 NED
Partial data ORC DH Worlds 2026
Fleet vs Race Composition Shift

A DEEPFRAME double-handed turnout from a fleet that leads elsewhere.

The Dutch national fleet leads with AEROMAX (18.5%), IRONWIND (11.5%), and KEELFLEX (10.4%) — a distribution where DEEPFRAME sits well down the order at 7.9%. Yet the 15 boats that raced the DH Worlds skewed sharply the other way: six of the 15 were DEEPFRAME (40% of the race group, roughly five times the archetype's national share), with GLIDEFORM (3) next. The drag-optimized, stiff-platform hulls the national fleet does not over-index on were the shape the Netherlands' double-handed entries brought to their home world championship. The race group and the national fleet are two different populations; the self-selecting two-person offshore entry tilted toward DEEPFRAME far more than the country's structural signature would predict.

  • NED national top-3: 18.5 / 11.5 / 10.4% · AEROMAX / IRONWIND / KEELFLEX
  • DH Worlds race group: 6 of 15 DEEPFRAME · 40% vs 7.9% national
Complete data Race group vs fleet
Race Archetypes

26 boats classified in the ORC DH Worlds 2026.

Archetypes as published 2026-06-11 — the FleetEdge view nearest this event.

DEEPFRAME

Deep-hull efficiency paired with a stiff platform for drag-optimized flow.

Boats 9
Share 34.6%

GLIDEFORM

Low-drag hull with efficient upwind flow and moderate displacement.

Boats 4
Share 15.4%

AEROBLADE

Light, agile platform optimized for quick acceleration and flat-water speed.

Boats 3
Share 11.5%

HEADFORCE

High righting moment, upwind-biased hull that powers through chop.

Boats 3
Share 11.5%

AEROMAX

Power-efficiency hybrid with strong upwind drive and moderate displacement.

Boats 2
Share 7.7%

GRAVITYRUN

Heavy-mode momentum boat with strong downwind power in sustained breeze.

Boats 2
Share 7.7%

IRONWIND

Stiff, stable-drive platform with predictable load behavior.

Boats 2
Share 7.7%

STORMLINE

Rough-water specialist with a hull shape optimized for steep, short waves.

Boats 1
Share 3.8%
Continue

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See Netherlands Racing — Baltic Offshore See Fleet Overview