Switzerland

171 boats. IRONWIND leads the fleet outright — better than a third of the hulls — with GLIDEFORM the light-air specialist behind it: a distinctive Alpine-lake signature on FleetEdge.

Kinship

Every fleet has a fingerprint.

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

 Hidden Shape

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

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

An IRONWIND-led Alpine-lake fleet — the stiff, stable-drive platform takes better than a third of the hulls, GLIDEFORM the light-air specialist second.

Switzerland's 171-boat fleet — 164 ORC-rated plus 7 mapped IRC entries — carries a distinctive IRONWIND-led lake-racing signature: IRONWIND takes better than a third of the classified hulls, well clear of second-placed GLIDEFORM — the stiff, stable-drive championship platform leading the low-drag smooth-mode flow specialist — a single-anchor concentration no other Atlantic or Mediterranean fleet matches.

171
boats
164
ORC-rated
9
archetypes
1
European title 2025
Domestic competitive fleet · as of 2026-07-10

ORC Authority: Swiss Sailing · Swiss Rating Office

Swiss Sailing and the Swiss Rating Office govern 171 SUI/CHE-flagged hulls in the FleetEdge fleet — 164 ORC-rated boats plus 7 mapped IRC entries, a near-pure-ORC national fleet shaped by light-wind Alpine-lake racing first, offshore racing second. Lac Léman, Lake Zürich and Lake Constance are the home waters; the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, and European championship venues are the away circuit. The national fleet does not dominate any one event on participation, but it does carry championship firepower at the grand-prix end — and its archetype signature is unlike any other landlocked or coastal fleet on FleetEdge because the lake conditions select for hull characteristics no offshore venue rewards in the same way.

The signal is championship-platform stiffness leading the Alpine-lake smooth-mode preference. IRONWIND leads outright — better than a third of the 168 classified Swiss boats — well clear of second-placed GLIDEFORM. IRONWIND is the stiff, stable-drive platform with predictable load behavior that carries Swiss programs onto Mediterranean and European championship water; GLIDEFORM is the low-drag hull with efficient flow and reaching-angle efficiency that carries VMG through the light patches and transitions that shape Lac Léman's evening Bise and the Lake Zürich thermals. STORMLINE rounds out the top three — the high-power, heel-sensitive platform Swiss owners reach for when the away circuit calls for reaching pace and chop tolerance — with AEROBLADE, the refined-rig platform, close behind in fourth. At the drawing-board level, Felci U leads — Felci's Italian-school lake-and-Mediterranean range the most-represented design voice in the fleet. The archetype concentration is a long-running structural preference read directly from the fleet composition.

The 2026 Swiss forward path runs the Alpine-lake championship circuit first, with the ESSE 850 one-design, the J/Boats horizontal fleet, and Xp-33 racer-cruiser carrying Lac Léman, Zürich and Constance club racing through the season, and KAJSA III's Copa del Rey defense the international title target the country has already proven it can win. From the lakes to the Mediterranean, in that order.

At a glance

Switzerland — structural profile.

Scope
171 boats
164 ORC-rated · 7 mapped-IRC
Top 3 archetypes
  1. IRONWIND — 63 boats (36.8%)
  2. GLIDEFORM — 28 boats (16.4%)
  3. STORMLINE — 22 boats (12.9%)
Eleven canonical performance archetypes cluster the fleet by dimensional signature. See the full map →
Top designer cluster
Felci U
15 boats (8.8%) — 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
Hidden Shape

The shape of the Swiss fleet.

171 Swiss boats across 9 archetypes — here's how they cluster, and what the collective signature reveals about Alpine-lake racing and Mediterranean grand-prix campaigns.

The Swiss ORC Fleet Signature

Switzerland's fleet is an IRONWIND-led Alpine-lake collective — one archetype takes better than a third of the classified hulls, well clear of the field. IRONWIND leads at 36.8% (63 boats) — the stiff, stable-drive platform with predictable load behavior that carries Swiss offshore programs into Mediterranean and European championship water. GLIDEFORM follows in second at 16.4% (28 boats), the low-drag smooth-mode flow specialist with reaching-angle efficiency, the signature of Lac Léman, Lake Zürich and Lake Constance light-air racing. STORMLINE rounds the top three at 12.9% (22 boats), the high-power, heel-sensitive platform with explosive reaching pace when sailed flat — the away-circuit hull for chop and pressure. Together the top three account for about two-thirds of the classified fleet — an IRONWIND-led lake-racing signature read directly off the hulls Swiss owners choose, with the European championship grand-prix tier living alongside it. In 2025 KAJSA III (DK 46) won Class A at the 43rd Copa del Rey — Switzerland's only European championship class title of the season, carried back to the lakes from Palma.

  • IRONWIND 36.8% · 63 boats
  • GLIDEFORM 16.4% · 28 boats
  • STORMLINE 12.9% · 22 boats

Dimension emphasis: Hull Efficiency · Comparative Time · Crew Intelligence

Felci U leads the drawing board — Felci's Italian-school lake-and-Mediterranean range the most-represented design voice in the fleet. In 2026 the Swiss forward path runs lake championship first and KAJSA III's Copa del Rey Class A defense second — an IRONWIND-led national fleet on Lac Léman, Zürich and Constance, with the European championship signature carried into the Mediterranean when the lakes release.

Complete data Latest published view

IRONWIND

Stiff, stable-drive platform with predictable load behavior.

moderate upwind · moderate reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 63
Share 36.8%
  • J-80 OD
  • J-24
  • Melges 24 OD

GLIDEFORM

Low-drag hull delivering smooth, efficient downwind acceleration.

weak upwind · moderate reaching · strong downwind

Boats 28
Share 16.4%
  • J-105
  • J-99
  • Farr 30

STORMLINE

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

moderate upwind · strong reaching · moderate downwind

Boats 22
Share 12.9%
  • Comfortina 32
  • Fenix
  • Aphrodite 101

AEROBLADE

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

moderate upwind · moderate reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 18
Share 10.5%
  • TP-52
  • Farr 40
  • XP-44

AEROMAX

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

strong upwind · neutral reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 12
Share 7.0%
  • 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 8
Share 4.7%
  • First 31.7
  • Express
  • First 31.7 LR

DEEPFRAME

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

neutral upwind · moderate reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 6
Share 3.5%
  • J-109
  • First 36
  • J-120

GRAVITYRUN

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

neutral upwind · moderate reaching · strong downwind

Boats 4
Share 2.3%
  • First 36.7
  • First 34.7
  • X-332

STEELFORM

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

neutral upwind · neutral reaching · VMG downwind

Boats 7
Share 4.1%
  • Bavaria CR 46
  • Dufour 41 Performance
  • Hanse 400 E
What we saw

An IRONWIND-led fleet read — and a Palma race group that did not match it.

Switzerland's 171-boat fleet is led outright by IRONWIND — better than a third of the classified hulls — the stiff stable-drive platform well clear of second-placed GLIDEFORM, the smooth-mode flow specialist, in an Alpine-lake-first read. Two Swiss boats raced the 43rd Copa del Rey ORC European Championship 2025 on Palma Bay against a 117-entry international field, and KAJSA III came home with Class A — the country's only European championship class title of the season, carried back to Lake Constance on a Mills-designed DK 46. Three insights from the Swiss lake-racing fleet and a Mediterranean grand-prix week that did not match its home-water bias.

Pre-race window · Archetype-Conditions

Swiss lake light wind is where GLIDEFORM was built to live.

The 2026 Swiss season opens on Lake Geneva, Lake Zürich and Lake Constance with the club championship circuit and the ESSE 850 one-design fleet, and runs through the summer into KAJSA III's Copa del Rey Class A defense in the Mediterranean. Swiss lake conditions are unlike any other ORC venue in the FleetEdge map — variable thermals, light patches, shifting pressure, transitions that punish power boats and reward patience. GLIDEFORM is the Swiss fleet's second-largest archetype, behind IRONWIND, and the low-drag smooth-mode geometry with reaching-angle efficiency is the hull philosophy built for exactly that pressure pattern. When a Swiss boat crosses the finish on Lake Zürich ahead of the fleet, it is usually because the GLIDEFORM signature held light-air VMG through a patch the competition dropped into. Pre-race speculation — actual conditions and crew execution will arbitrate.

  • SUI GLIDEFORM density: 16.4% · #2 archetype · 171-boat fleet
  • IRONWIND leads the national mix at 36.8%
Pre-race context Weather & design profile (historical)
Championship Citation

KAJSA III — European Champion, Class A.

KAJSA III (SUI-2012, DK 46, AEROBLADE) finished 1st of 34 in Class A with 25.5 points at the 43rd Copa del Rey ORC European Championship 2025 — the country's only European championship class title of the regatta. A Mills-designed AEROBLADE DK 46 in a 117-entry international field, converting a 36-race, four-class championship week on the Palma breeze into the Class A trophy and holding off the German runner-up (GER-8042) and the Spanish third (ESP-19981) to finish the week with a clean line into the national fleet's only trophy. The AEROBLADE archetype is a high-efficiency-rig platform with sharp heel sensitivity and rapid trim response — a grand-prix profile that rewards crew discipline on trim and balance across every race, and KAJSA III delivered that discipline for the championship stretch that earned the class title.

  • 1st of 34 · Class A, 25.5 points
  • Podium: SUI-GER-ESP · AEROBLADE DK 46
Complete data 43rd Copa del Rey 2025
Fleet vs Race Composition Shift

The Swiss boats that traveled to Palma were not the Swiss fleet.

Switzerland's 171-boat national fleet runs IRONWIND 36.8% / GLIDEFORM 16.4% / STORMLINE 12.9% — the IRONWIND-led Alpine-lake-first signature of the full SUI/CHE fleet. The 2 Swiss boats that traveled to the 43rd Copa del Rey were both AEROBLADE grand-prix platforms (KAJSA III DK 46 and MUSICA TP 52) — a 100% AEROBLADE traveling group where AEROBLADE sits fourth in the national mix at about a tenth of the fleet. The Palma delegation is not a cross-section of the Swiss fleet; it is a narrow slice of the grand-prix top, the layer where international championship programs live. Neither IRONWIND nor GLIDEFORM — the two largest archetypes in the national fleet — was represented at Palma, because that tier lives on the lakes, and the grand-prix tier travels. When the European championship result comes home, read it as a grand-prix result from a championship program, not a signature of Swiss lake racing as a whole.

  • Fleet lead: IRONWIND 36.8%
  • Race group: AEROBLADE 100% · 2 of 2 entries
Complete data Race group vs fleet
Continue

Go deeper.

Fleet Overview

The global offshore racing landscape and how Switzerland's IRONWIND-led Alpine-lake fleet fits within it.

Platform Scale

How FleetEdge measures racing across geographies and fleet types — 11 archetypes, every fleet's hidden shape.

Join the world's offshore racing teams.

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

See Switzerland Racing — ORC World Fleet See Fleet Overview