Data Definitions
Every figure on FleetEdge names its cohort. This page defines the vocabulary.
Every fleet has a fingerprint.
Every count on a fleet page declares what it counts — start where your boats sail.
Hidden ShapeThe hidden shape of the fleet.
The kinds of boat that keep appearing when every hull is measured the same way.
The shape of the fleet, before the scoreboard has anything to say.
Different pages answer different questions, so they count different cohorts. A country page counts boats by certificate provenance — the national flag on the paperwork. A fleet or race page counts a competitive cohort — the boats that sail together, which can include entries from other countries. Two totals that differ are not a contradiction; they are two well-posed questions with two correct answers.
That only works if every figure declares its scope. Across FleetEdge, each figure carries three things: the cohort it counts, the denominator behind any percentage, and the date of the published data view it comes from. This page defines the terms those labels use.
The terms behind the counts.
ORC-rated
A boat carrying an ORC certificate in the analyzed corpus. ORC-rated boats bring measured hull, rig, and stability data — the physics foundation of the analysis.
Mapped-IRC
An IRC-rated boat matched to its ORC design family using measured hull dimensions — length, beam, draft, and displacement ratio — and carrying a projected physics profile from that family. FleetEdge never reads IRC rating values; the match uses public dimensions only.
Classified / unclassified
A classified boat has been assigned to one of the eight performance archetypes (one of the fleet's eight recurring design types). A boat remains unclassified when its available data is insufficient for a confident assignment. Archetype percentages state their denominator — the classified pool or the whole fleet — wherever they appear.
Race data vs. authority counts
An authority count reflects certificates issued under a national authority — the registry view. A race-data count reflects boats linked to actual event results — the competition view. A boat can hold a certificate and never race; the two counts answer different questions.
Banked race evidence
Race results accumulate. When a reading cites race results, it rests on every scored result banked for that boat — not on a single day’s outcome — so the reading firms up as the boat races more. “Banked” names that accumulation; elsewhere the site says simply race results.
Scope labels
National fleet view counts by certificate provenance (flag). Global fleet view spans the full analyzed corpus. Domestic competitive fleet is a competition cohort anchored to a country’s racing circuit — and can include foreign-flagged entries. Race and event sections count only the boats in that event.
As-of date
Every macro figure cites the date of the published data view it comes from. Race and event sections cite their own publication vintage separately — see below.
Why two totals can both be right.
Consider one boat: flagged in one country, racing a neighboring country’s offshore circuit, entered in a championship abroad. She appears in her flag country’s national fleet view, in the neighboring circuit’s domestic competitive fleet, and in the championship’s race cohort — three pages, three cohorts, one boat, no double counting within any one view.
The rule of thumb: before comparing two FleetEdge figures, compare their scope labels. If the cohorts differ, the numbers are answering different questions — and should differ.
The canonical count ladder.
Four macro boat counts appear across this site, each at its own scope and date — defined here once:
Published records — 13,716 boats in the current publication (as of 2026-09-02). Every boat record carried by the current publication of the FleetEdge data service, whatever its analysis depth.
Governed corpus — 12,965 boats (July 2026). Boats admitted through FleetEdge’s identity and eligibility governance — deduplicated, provenance-checked, and eligible for analysis.
Analyzed boats — 11,207 (July 2026). The governed boats whose certificates support the full 52-dimension analysis; boats whose certificate data cannot support it are held at the governed tier, not padded forward.
ORC boats scored — 9,591 (July 2026). The ORC-rated subset of analyzed boats scored by PPI (the Performance Potential Index); boats outside that subset stay at the analyzed tier. Scoring at this rung is the certificate-derived Design PPI — race data is not required, so a boat that has never raced still carries a score. The race-dependent readings — Race PPI and the crew residual (what remains after the boat's evaluated pace is accounted for — negative is faster, in s/nm) — are narrower cohorts and state their own coverage where they appear.
Two data cuts appear above: the current-publication count carries its own as-of date (2026-09-02), while the governed-corpus ladder is stated at its July 2026 analysis cut — the counts are not a single-date subset chain across that boundary, and each figure should be read at its own date. Validation cohorts are narrower still and say so where they appear: the published fairness-validation cohort is 7,652 boat-race results across 572 eligible class-level fields, and empirical crew-residual coverage spans 1,244 boats in the current publication.
Two race-record counts appear beside the boat ladder, at different grains — also defined here once:
Race events — 967. Events tracked across the analysis corpus, counted at event grain: a regatta or a series is one event, however many races it holds.
Races scored — 959. Individual races whose results entered scoring, counted at race grain. An event is tracked whenever its published record supports analysis at any depth — identity, finishing order, or timing — while a race is scored only when its results pass scoring’s checks, an elapsed time, a usable course distance, and a resolved boat identity among them. An event can be tracked while none of its races are scored, and the two figures answer different questions at different grains.
Archetype assignments are dated.
A boat’s archetype comes from its certificate, and certificates are re-measured over time — so the same boat can sit in one archetype for one season and a neighboring archetype after a re-measurement. Race and event sections deliberately render the archetype assignments from the FleetEdge analysis nearest that event’s date — how the fleet was grouped at the time — and say so in their provenance line. Current fleet surfaces always reflect the latest analysis.
The archetype names themselves are one vocabulary everywhere: an older race section groups its boats as they were grouped then, under the same archetype names used across FleetEdge today. Compare a dated section with other sections of the same date; compare current fleet surfaces with each other.
Reading a race section: the provenance line beneath a Race Archetypes section tells you which dated analysis its groupings come from. Shares and boat counts belong to that dated view — not to today’s fleet view.
What kind of claim am I reading?
Alongside its scope, every analytical card on FleetEdge carries one of five public evidence badges — a closed, stable lexicon that tells you whether a figure is a live fleet-wide measurement, a result under on-site validation, a structural readout without race attribution, a low-sample structural view, or a forward-looking pre-race scenario. The badge lexicon is defined on the How It Works page.
In beta as a product. These plain-language definitions travel with every Media Desk story pack — the press packs the desk composes for journalists and broadcasters. See Media Desk →
Read the fleet with confidence.
Every figure names its cohort, its denominator, and its date. That is the standard.