How to run a sailing race.

Before race day

Most of a good race happens at a desk weeks before. Under the RRS the organising authority publishes a notice of race (rule 89.2) and the race committee publishes sailing instructions (rule 90.2). RRS Appendix J lists what each must contain; World Sailing’s Notice of Race Guide and Sailing Instructions Guide give recommended wording.

• Notice of race — what a competitor needs to decide to enter: rules, eligibility, entry, schedule, venue, scoring, risk statement, data protection. Publish it with the entry form.
• Sailing instructions — how the racing runs: schedule, class flags, courses, marks, the start and finish lines, time limits, penalties, protests, scoring, safety. Make them available before the race (rule 25.1).
• Race officials — the race officer, the race committee team, the protest committee or a judge, and who decides on safety.
• Course and marks — courses that suit the venue and the wind range, marks that are visible and laid where boats can round them safely.
• Safety — a written race-day plan: roles, safety boats and their crews, weather limits, the check-out / check-in procedure, emergency numbers and how an emergency is handled.
• Entries and ratings — the entry list with sail numbers and, for handicap racing, each boat’s rating from its certificate or the club list.

The race committee’s kit list

• Flags: each class flag, P (and I, Z, U or the black flag if your SIs use them), AP, X, First Substitute, N, S, the orange flag for the starting line and the blue flag for the finish.
• A horn (and a spare), a reliable clock synced to network time, a stopwatch or timer.
• VHF radios on the channel in the SIs; a course board for the course signal.
• Finish sheets, pencils, a clipboard — or the race office on a phone or tablet.
• The SIs, the entry list, the safety plan and the emergency numbers on paper.

On race day

1. Check the forecast against your weather limits and decide early. Postpone ashore with AP if needed (with flag D in the SIs, boats wait ashore until it is made).
2. Brief the competitors if the event has a briefing — the course, the VHF channel, anything that changed (changes to the SIs must be posted as the SIs say).
3. Check every boat out: a sign-out sheet, a tally board — or the race code, if the race runs on VesselSOS Racing.
4. Lay the start line roughly square to the wind and long enough for the fleet: a common rule of thumb is 1.5 × the boats starting × their length.
5. Signal the course no later than the warning signal and run the start sequence (next section).
6. Watch the start, make recall signals at once, note boats that are early.
7. Shorten (flag S) or abandon (flag N) when the conditions or the clock require it, with the sound signals in the Race Signals.

The visual signals govern. A horn that fails or a phone that beeps late changes nothing: under RRS 26 times are taken from the flags.

Recording the finish

Under the RRS 2025–2028 a boat finishes when any part of her hull crosses the finishing line from the course side. Record, for every boat, the sail number and the time to the second, in order — two people (one calls, one writes) and a voice recorder as backup is the classic set-up. Note boats that retire and boats you did not see finish; never guess.

Time limits come from rule 35 and your SIs: the race time limit for the first boat, and often a finishing window for the rest.

Check-in, results and protests

1. Check every boat back in. The race is not over until every crew is accounted for ashore — chase anyone missing at once.
2. Score the race. Unless the SIs say otherwise, Appendix A’s Low Point System applies: 1 point for first, 2 for second … and a boat that did not start, did not finish or retired scores one more than the number of boats entered in the series.
3. For handicap racing, work out corrected times from the elapsed times and ratings, with the formula your NoR names.
4. Post provisional results and the protest time limit on the official notice board.
5. Hold hearings, then publish final results — and, for a series, the series score with the discards your SIs allow.

Where VesselSOS Racing fits

VesselSOS Racing is a race-office web app in its pilot phase (clubs for the 2027 season). The skippers join with a 6-digit code in the free VesselSOS app, which makes joining the check-out and arriving ashore the check-in; the race office sees every boat live, possible early starts and missed marks as flags for the race officer to decide, and provisional line and corrected results at the last finish. A competitor’s SOS guides the call to the right rescue centre on their own phone and alerts the race committee — VesselSOS never alerts a rescue centre itself, and it does not replace your safety boats or VHF.