Netherlands

416 Dutch boats across 25 international events. North Sea-bred efficiency with a broad international footprint.

Kinship

Every fleet has a fingerprint.

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

 Hidden Shape

11 archetypes across 31 dimensional features.
How this country's fleet clusters before the results arrive.

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

A power-efficient fleet with an international footprint.

The Netherlands' ORC fleet spans 416 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 with an AEROMAX structural signature and 2026's ORC Double-Handed World Championship coming home to Scheveningen in May.

418
boats
25
events
225
races
National cohort · as of 2026-04-21 · build a2e90234

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 Rolex Fastnet, Copa del Rey, and the Baltic offshore circuit. The breadth is visible in the archetype spread — no single platform dominates. Six archetypes carry meaningful share before the tail begins, and the Netherlands fields J-Boats, X-Yachts, Dehler, and Beneteau production lines alongside a long tail of one-off builds.

AEROMAX leads the platform mix at 18.0% (75 boats) — power-efficiency hybrids with strong upwind drive and moderate displacement, the long-running Dutch preference for platforms that convert upwind pressure into speed without surrendering offshore range. AEROBLADE adds refined-rig heel-sensitive aero; GLIDEFORM adds low-drag downwind-biased hulls — the Dutch preference for efficiency over displacement rather than heavy-air specialisation.

In 2026, this fleet's home-water moment is the ORC Double-Handed World Championship at Scheveningen (May 18–25) — the Netherlands hosts the global two-person offshore title in the North Sea, the event that brings the whole international DH fleet to Dutch waters for one week in the spring.

At a glance

Netherlands — structural snapshot.

Scope
418 boats
409 ORC-rated · 9 IRC-synthetic
Top 3 archetypes
  1. AEROMAX — 75 boats (17.9%)
  2. AEROBLADE — 56 boats (13.4%)
  3. GLIDEFORM — 47 boats (11.2%)
Eleven canonical performance archetypes cluster the fleet by dimensional signature. See the full map →
Top designer cluster
Johnstone R
49 boats (11.7%) — the most-represented design voice in this fleet.

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

National cohort · as of 2026-04-23 · build e775022a
Hidden Shape

The shape of the Dutch fleet.

418 Dutch boats across 11 archetypes — here's how they cluster, and what the collective signature reveals about how the Netherlands races.

The Dutch ORC Fleet Signature

The Netherlands' fleet is an AEROMAX-led broadly-campaigning collective. AEROMAX leads at 17.9% (75 boats) — power-efficiency hybrids that favour medium-air transitions and convert upwind pressure into speed without surrendering offshore range. AEROBLADE follows at 13.4% (56 boats) with refined-rig heel-sensitive aero, and GLIDEFORM at 11.2% (47 boats) with low-drag downwind-biased hulls — reinforcing the fleet's bias toward efficiency across both tacks. Six archetypes carry meaningful share before the tail begins — a signature of a fleet that buys across both production one-designs and one-off builds, and campaigns from North Sea club racing through Mediterranean and Atlantic offshore circuits.

  • AEROMAX 17.9% · 75 boats
  • AEROBLADE 13.4% · 56 boats
  • GLIDEFORM 11.2% · 47 boats

Dimension emphasis: Sail Performance · Condition & Tactical

In 2026, this fleet hosts the ORC Double-Handed World Championship at Scheveningen (May 18–25) — where power-efficiency hybrids meet the North Sea's mixed medium-air and gradient-breeze envelope on home water.

High confidence Production

Aeromax

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

Boats 75
Share 17.9%

Aeroblade

Refined-rig platform with sharp heel sensitivity and rapid trim response when sailed flat.

Boats 56
Share 13.4%

Glideform

Low-drag hull with strong downwind bias through efficient waterline-to-beam ratios.

Boats 47
Share 11.2%

Headforce

Pressure-driven compact-rig hull that punches through chop at the windward mark.

Boats 40
Share 9.6%

Ironwind

Stiff, stable-drive platform with predictable load behaviour.

Boats 36
Share 8.6%

Steelform

Compact-rig stiff-platform with the fleet's lowest race-to-race variance.

Boats 34
Share 8.1%

Balancecore

Heel-sensitive platform with a wider, more forgiving performance envelope.

Boats 29
Share 6.9%

Gravityrun

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

Boats 27
Share 6.5%

Stormline

Big-rig heel-sensitive platform with the fleet's highest rig-power-to-stability ratio.

Boats 27
Share 6.5%

Deepframe

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

Boats 26
Share 6.2%

Keelflex

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

Boats 18
Share 4.3%

No single platform dominates the Dutch fleet. AEROMAX leads at 18.0%, but AEROBLADE, GLIDEFORM, HEADFORCE, IRONWIND, and STEELFORM all sit in meaningful share — six archetypes before the tail begins. The distribution reflects a fleet that campaigns from inshore North Sea club racing through offshore championship circuits.

Archetypes in the Dutch fleet, grounded in real platforms.

AEROMAX

18.0% · 75

Power-efficiency hybrids that favour medium-air transitions.

  • J/122Johnstone / J Boats
  • Dehler 41Judel Vrolijk / Dehler
  • Grand Soleil 40Botin & Partners / Cantiere del Pardo

Dutch AEROMAX boats cluster on platforms like these — power-efficiency hybrids that carry North Sea medium-air work into Mediterranean championship circuits without surrendering offshore range.

AEROBLADE

13.5% · 56

Refined-rig platforms with sharp heel sensitivity and rapid trim response when sailed flat.

  • J-109Johnstone / J Boats (10 boats)
  • J-105Johnstone / J Boats (8 boats)
  • J-35Johnstone / J Boats (6 boats)

Dutch AEROBLADE boats cluster on J-Boats platforms like these — Johnstone-designed club racers that anchor 11.5% of the Dutch fleet as the most-common designer thread, turning puffs into distance on the flat-water North Sea bays.

GLIDEFORM

11.3% · 47

Low-drag hulls that reward clean water and medium VMG.

  • X-41Jeppesen-Nielsen / X-Yachts
  • Dehler 38Judel Vrolijk / Dehler
  • First 31.7Finot / Beneteau (7 boats)

Dutch GLIDEFORM boats cluster on platforms like these — the efficient hull-first contingent that gives back nothing to the tow across longer offshore legs, the signature that carries the middle band of Dutch offshore racing.

What we saw

From Cowes to Scheveningen.

The ORC Double-Handed World Championship comes home to Scheveningen May 18–25, and the 14-boat Dutch cohort at the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race is the vintage signature that shapes the pre-race read. Four insights from a fleet that campaigns across borders and now hosts the DH Worlds on its own North Sea water.

Pre-race window · Archetype-Conditions

AEROMAX meets the North Sea gradient on home water.

The ORC Double-Handed World Championship runs at Scheveningen, Netherlands on May 18–25, 2026 — the global two-person offshore title on the Dutch coast, the first time the event has landed in home waters for this Dutch fleet. May North Sea conditions typically deliver mixed medium-air gradient with the occasional thermal shift off the Hook of Holland — the exact pressure window where AEROMAX's power-efficiency signature converts upwind drive into corrected-time margins. The Dutch fleet's 18.0% AEROMAX density is the highest of any archetype in the national distribution, and the home-host advantage includes crew familiarity with the local tidal, current, and weather patterns the course delivers. Pre-race speculation — actual conditions and crew execution will arbitrate.

  • Racing: May 18–25, 2026 · Scheveningen
  • NED AEROMAX density: 18.0% · 75 boats
Pre-race speculative FE Weather × Archetype (historical)
Multi-Dimension Presence

OLYMPIX led all three physics families at Fastnet 2025.

NED 7084 OLYMPIX (Landmark 43 mod., KEELFLEX) is the only Dutch boat to sit in the top three of all three dimension families at the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race — 1st in Comparative Time at −38.0 sec/nm, 1st in Crew Effectiveness at −37.3 sec/nm, and 2nd in Sail Drive Efficiency at 34. A modified Landmark 43 converting on allowance, crew execution, and raw sail drive in the conditions that prevailed across the 695-nautical-mile Cowes-to-Cherbourg course. Three-family coherence is the rare full-stack result, and in the 14-boat Dutch contingent no other entry matched it.

  • Comp Time: −38.0 sec/nm (1st of 14)
  • Crew Eff: −37.3 sec/nm · Sail Drive: 34 (2nd)
High confidence RR Rolex Fastnet 2025 · NED cohort
Hull Edge / Under-Conversion

BOUDRAGON: the physics leader without the allowance result.

NED 20002 BOUDRAGON (W60, KEELFLEX) leads the Dutch contingent in Sail Drive Efficiency at 37, tops the Dutch beat VMG 12-knot board at 7.02 knots, and posts the heel slope signature of a heavy W60 holding power in breeze. But the allowance correction flips the lead — BOUDRAGON finishes 10th of 14 on Comparative Time at +5.5 sec/nm, while the much smaller Landmark 43 OLYMPIX takes the delta. The W60's raw speed absorbs the rating cost when conditions don't sustain the breeze its hull is built for. The hull was there; the scoring-allowance conversion was the gap.

  • Sail Drive Efficiency: 37 (1st of 14)
  • Comp Time: +5.5 sec/nm (10th of 14)
High confidence RR Rolex Fastnet 2025 · NED cohort
Fleet vs Race Composition Shift

The Dutch boats that sailed Fastnet were not the Dutch fleet.

The Dutch national fleet is 18.0% AEROMAX and 13.5% AEROBLADE. The 14-boat Dutch cohort at the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race ran 42.9% AEROMAX (6 of 14 boats) — a 25-point concentration over the macro distribution. STORMLINE rose to 21.4% in the race cohort (3 boats), while AEROBLADE fell to 7.1% (1 boat). The race cohort read differently from the fleet: Dutch owners self-select for the 695-nautical-mile offshore test with the platforms built to carry power through a long course, and the AEROMAX concentration at Fastnet reinforces the fleet-wide lead as the structural preference. Seven of the 14 NED entries posted sub-zero Comparative Time residuals across the course — a 50% sub-allowance rate, four of them from AEROMAX hulls.

  • NED fleet AEROMAX: 18.0%
  • Fastnet NED cohort AEROMAX: 42.9% · +25pp
High confidence FE Cohort vs Fleet
Continue

Go deeper.

Fleet Overview

The global offshore racing landscape and how Netherlands's fleet fits within it.

Platform Scale

How FleetEdge measures racing across geographies and fleet types globally.

Join the world's offshore racing teams.

Historical weather meets hull physics — every fleet, every leg.

See Netherlands Racing — Baltic Offshore See Fleet Overview