Spain

The Mediterranean powerhouse. 1,668 boats across 20 events. HEADFORCE-led fleet DNA — an unusual signature for a national fleet.

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 Spanish boat clusters, before the results arrive.
Kinship

A HEADFORCE-led Mediterranean fleet with a pressure-driven heavy-air character.

Spain's ESP-flagged fleet is one of the largest single-country fleets on FleetEdge — 1,668 boats led, unusually, by HEADFORCE. HEADFORCE is the pressure-driven upwind specialist with compact rigs and higher-drag, power-oriented hull forms that improves disproportionately in heavy air. The Spanish distribution is broad and flat — no archetype carries a commanding share, and the stiff STEELCORE platform and rig-driven AEROMAX press close behind — but HEADFORCE leading at all is the signature of an offshore-heavy fleet shaped by Balearic, Cantabrian, and Atlantic Galician water rather than light-to-moderate inshore breeze.

1,668
boats
20
events
270
races
National fleet view · as of 2026-07-10

ORC Authority: RFEV

Spanish offshore racing extends from the Balearics to Atlantic Galicia. The Real Federación Española de Vela governs 1,668 ESP-flagged boats in the FleetEdge fleet — one of the deepest single-country fleets on the platform. The signature is unusual: HEADFORCE leads, the stiff, stability-first STEELCORE follows close behind, and AEROMAX rounds out the top three. The distribution is strikingly flat — eleven archetypes spread within a few points of one another, with no single family taking command. A pressure-driven upwind specialist heading even a flat national fleet is rare on FleetEdge — most countries lean toward AEROBLADE or GRAVITYRUN. The coastline does the sorting: the steady Cantabrian coast tests compact-rig hulls that punch through chop, the Balearic offshore legs reward power-efficiency hybrids that can carry a load, and the Atlantic Galician edges of the peninsula demand boats that can hold a line in heavy-air long-swell geometry. Every archetype in HEADFORCE's signature — small foretriangle, compact rig, higher-drag hull form — is the platform of a fleet that races in pressure, not in zephyrs.

The designer market is fragmented. No drawing board carries the 15% share that would mark a dominant Spanish designer; Farr Design leads at 8.2% (137 boats), the most-common voice in a deeply diversified ledger. The rest of the field is a long tail of Finot, Felci, and other European architects, alongside Spanish indigenous boards and Beneteau and Dufour production houses. Spanish depth comes from breadth, not from any single design family dominating the national fleet.

National fleet view · 1,668 boats · as of 2026-07-10

At a glance

Spain — structural profile.

Scope
1,668 boats
1,595 ORC-rated · 73 mapped-IRC
Top 3 archetypes
  1. HEADFORCE — 222 boats (13.3%)
  2. STEELCORE — 209 boats (12.5%)
  3. AEROMAX — 202 boats (12.1%)
Eleven canonical performance archetypes cluster the fleet by dimensional signature. See the full map →
Top designer cluster
Farr Yacht Design
137 boats (8.2%) — 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 2026-07-10
Fleet DNA

How the Spanish boats are built.

1,668 boats in the fleet, its ORC-rated entries and a smaller mapped-IRC contingent attributed across 11 archetypes — here's how they cluster, and what the collective signature reveals about how Spain races.

The Spanish ORC Fleet Signature

Spain's fleet is a HEADFORCE-led Mediterranean collective shaped by pressure rather than zephyrs. HEADFORCE leads at 13.3% (222 boats) — the pressure-driven upwind specialist with compact rigs and higher-drag, power-oriented hull forms that improves disproportionately in heavy air, and an unusual archetype to head a national fleet. STEELCORE follows at 12.5% (209 boats), the stiff, stability-first rigid platform that holds its line through Balearic chop and Atlantic long-swell. AEROMAX rounds the top three at 12.1% (202 boats), the power-efficiency hybrid that carries a load through the Balearic offshore legs. The shares are close and the leaders separated by barely two points — all eleven archetypes are represented within a tight band, one of the broadest and flattest single-country mixes on FleetEdge, the breadth of a fleet that races from inshore club courses to Atlantic Galician long-swell geometry.

  • HEADFORCE 13.3% · 222 boats
  • STEELCORE 12.5% · 209 boats
  • AEROMAX 12.1% · 202 boats

Dimension emphasis: Sail Performance · Condition & Tactical

At the ORC Sportboat European Championship, SOS MAR MENOR (ESP-02, Sonar 23) took the SB class title from a five-boat Spanish contingent — the stiffest platform among the entries converting consistency into a championship. See the selected race result.

Complete data Latest published view

HEADFORCE

Upwind-biased pressure boat driving compact rigs through higher-drag hull forms.

strong upwind · weak reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 222
Share 13.3%
  • Fortuna 9
  • Miura
  • Elan 333

STEELCORE

Central, stiff rigid-platform hull — stability-positive, hull-form-dominant, low heel-sensitivity.

neutral upwind · neutral reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 209
Share 12.5%
  • Sunfast 37
  • Dufour 40
  • Grand Soleil 37 BC

AEROMAX

Upwind-power specialist with the fleet's strongest rig-driven VMG.

strong upwind · neutral reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 202
Share 12.1%
  • First 40.7
  • First 40
  • Grand Soleil 40

KEELFLEX

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

neutral upwind · moderate reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 195
Share 11.7%
  • First 31.7
  • Express
  • First 31.7 LR

GRAVITYRUN

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

neutral upwind · moderate reaching · strong downwind

Boats 181
Share 10.9%
  • First 36.7
  • First 34.7
  • X-332

STORMLINE

High-power, heel-sensitive platform with explosive potential when sailed flat.

moderate upwind · strong reaching · moderate downwind

Boats 167
Share 10.0%
  • Comfortina 32
  • Fenix
  • Aphrodite 101

IRONWIND

Stiff, stable-drive platform with predictable load behavior.

moderate upwind · moderate reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 160
Share 9.6%
  • J-80 OD
  • J-24
  • Melges 24 OD

STEELFORM

Compact-rig, rigid platform delivering consistent, low-variance results.

neutral upwind · neutral reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 126
Share 7.6%
  • Bavaria CR 46
  • Dufour 41 Performance
  • Hanse 400 E

GLIDEFORM

Low-drag hull delivering smooth, efficient downwind acceleration.

weak upwind · moderate reaching · strong downwind

Boats 77
Share 4.6%
  • J-105
  • J-99
  • Farr 30

AEROBLADE

High-efficiency rig with sharp heel sensitivity and rapid trim response.

moderate upwind · moderate reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 65
Share 3.9%
  • TP-52
  • Farr 40
  • XP-44

DEEPFRAME

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

neutral upwind · moderate reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 63
Share 3.8%
  • J-109
  • First 36
  • J-120

Event cohort view · 5 boats · as of 2026-07-10

Selected Race Result

ORC Sportboat European Championship — Class SB.

5 of 1,668 fleet boats competed. 8 races — one coastal leg and a seven-race windward-leeward series, scored ToT and PCS. July 2024.

Headlines

Where the entries led.

Comparative Time and Crew Residual both read negative-is-better: a negative figure means the boat went faster than its rating expected (it beat its rating), positive means slower. This small sportboat group all carried positive deltas — the class sailed under conservative allowances — so the cards rank from the smallest gap to the rating up.

Comparative Time

1. ORIENT EXPRESS 6.5 · 40.9 sec/nm
2. PINTO TERCERO · 47.0 sec/nm
3. SOS MAR MENOR · 56.9 sec/nm
Cohort 6 boats

Crew Residual

1. ORIENT EXPRESS 6.5 · 59.1 sec/nm
2. PINTO TERCERO · 62.5 sec/nm
3. SOMVELA · 66.5 sec/nm
Cohort 6 boats

RM / Displacement

1. SOS MAR MENOR · 29.5
2. UN MAR SIN BARRERAS · 29.2
3. ORIENT EXPRESS 6.5 · 25.7
Cohort 6 boats
Stories

What the result tells us.

Championship Citation

SOS MAR MENOR — European Champion, Class SB.

SOS MAR MENOR IRONWIND (ESP-02, Sonar 23) won the SB class at the ORC Sportboat European Championship on 15 points — a Spanish title carried by a Kirby-designed three-person keelboat. The win came from consistency across the eight-race series, not from leading any single allowance dimension: SOS MAR MENOR ranked third of the six boats FleetEdge observed in Comparative Time median. The Sonar banked low scores race after race while faster-rated rivals dropped points, and a clean series beat a quick one. A five-boat Spanish contingent raced; one of them took the trophy home.

  • 1st · Class SB · 15 pts over 8 races
  • Top Spanish boat · Sonar 23, Kirby design
Complete data ORC Sportboat Euros (ORC Sportboat European Championship)
Hull Edge

SOS MAR MENOR: the stiffest platform among the entries, and the one that converted.

The champion carried the highest righting-moment-to-displacement ratio of the six observed boats — 29.5, against 25.7 for the allowance leader — on the smallest sail-drive index in the race group at 21. That is a stability-first, modest-sail-area platform: not the configuration that wins the Comparative Time column, and it didn't — SOS MAR MENOR sat third on allowance median at 56.9 sec/nm. What the stiffness bought was predictability. The Sonar 23 converted a mid-pack physics profile into the lowest points total in the class, 15 over eight races, while the higher-sail-drive boats ahead of it on the water dropped places on the scoreboard. The platform's edge showed up in the standings, not in the speed columns.

  • RM/displacement: 29.5 · best of the 6 entries
  • Sail drive index: 21 · lowest of the 6 entries · 1st in class
Complete data FleetEdge Physics vs result
Cross-Family Contrast

ORIENT EXPRESS 6.5: two dimension families led, third on the scoreboard.

ORIENT EXPRESS 6.5 (TUR, Farr 25 OD) led the observed race group in Comparative Time median at 40.9 sec/nm and in crew residual at 59.1 — yet finished third in the SB class on 22 points. PINTO TERCERO (ESP, GP-26) sat second on allowance at 47.0 and finished fourth on 23. The two boats that led the allowance-and-crew dimensions both ended up behind SOS MAR MENOR on the scoreline. Allowance-median leadership measures how a boat sails relative to its rating on the water; a championship measures who banks the lowest points across a discard-scored series. They are different questions, and at this regatta they had different answers.

  • Allowance leader: ORIENT EXPRESS 6.5 · 3rd in class, 22 pts
  • Champion: SOS MAR MENOR · 3rd in Comp Time
Complete data FleetEdge Allowance vs result
Race Archetypes

6 boats classified in the ORC Sportboat European Championship.

The race group FleetEdge observed at this event — five Spanish entries plus the Turkish allowance leader — carries a single classification: all six boats are stiff, stable-drive IRONWIND platforms, a uniform sportboat field where the racing separated crews, not hull families. Archetypes reflect the current fleet view — no published view near this event yet.

IRONWIND

Stiff, stable-drive platform with predictable load behavior.

Boats 6
Share 100.0%

Classified fleet view · 1,667 of 1,668 classified · as of 2026-07-10

Fleet Stories

The Spanish fleet signature.

Farr Design — Spain's most-common drawing board

In a fleet split across Farr, Finot, and Felci lines, no designer dominates. Farr Design carries the largest single share at 8.2% (137 boats), the single most-represented voice in a deeply diversified ledger. The Spanish design market reads as breadth rather than concentration — production houses, Spanish indigenous boards, and a long tail of European architects fill out the remainder, with no drawing board approaching the share that would mark a dominant national designer.

Popular Classes

The boats that define Spanish racing.

Dufour 34 (36)

A production racer-cruiser from Dufour — one of the most-numerous keelboats on the Spanish club circuit.

Fortuna 9 (35)

A compact Spanish one-design class — a domestic-built racer with a long club-racing tradition on Iberian water.

First 31.7 (32)

A Beneteau First-series racer-cruiser — a fixture of mixed ORC fleets across the Mediterranean.

First 40.7 (31)

A Beneteau First offshore platform — the larger end of the First line that carries Spanish crews into championship classes.

J-80 (26)

A J/Boats one-design sportboat — the strict-class keelboat that anchors Spanish inshore and grand-prix sportboat racing.

Continue

Go deeper.

Mediterranean Championship

The cross-national Mediterranean fleet that Spanish boats race into — where the HEADFORCE-led Spanish fleet meets the broad-spectrum Italian fleet on shared water.

Fleet Archetypes

The 11 canonical performance archetypes behind the Spanish signature — including HEADFORCE, the pressure-driven upwind specialist that leads this fleet, and the stiff, stability-first platform that carried SOS MAR MENOR to the SB Euros title on consistency.

Join the world's offshore racing teams.

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

See Spain Racing — Mediterranean Championship See Fleet Overview