October 23, 2025 Longtime Sailing in Canada contributor, Dave Dellenbaugh has scheduled a four-part series that will review and expand your knowledge of key rules and how they apply to common situations around the race course. This will be a ‘deep dive’ with lots of practical (and some tricky) examples to help improve your racing confidence and performance. …
May 15, 2024 The first four rules in Part 2 of the Racing Rules of Sailing (Rules 10, 11, 12 and 13) establish which boat must keep clear when two boats meet. The next few rules (Rule 15, 16 and 17) put limits on the right-of-way boats. With this article we will start with Rule 15. Rule…
Feb 14, 2024 In the last article I discussed a few situations that can happen after you cross the finishing line. I focused on the first two exceptions in the definition of finish. This article will focus on the third exception (c) “continues to sail the course.” In the diagram, the course is a twice…
Jan 31, 2024 I had the opportunity to spend a weekend with 60 University sailors from ten different Universities who were racing the Canadian Intercollegiate Sailing Association (CICSA) Team Racing championships. Team racing is fun part of the sport and a great way to exercise a lot of rules in a short time. There were…
Dec 13, 2023 Part 1 HEREPart 2 HERE Two articles ago I talked about tacking too close. Both examples that I used had the tacking boat tacking from port tack onto starboard tack. This time I would like to discuss the slightly more complicated situation of the boat that tacks from starboard tack onto port…
Nov 15, 2023 By Andrew Alberti In the last article we started a discussion about tacking. In that article we discussed Rule 13 “WHILE TACKING”. This time we will talk about rule 18.3 “Passing Head to Wind in the Zone”. In older versions of the rules this was called “Tacking in the Zone.” In the…
In a recent protest, it became clear to me that there is confusion about the rules related to tacking. Tacking is not defined in the rule book, but there are a few rules that either discuss tacking, or relate to what we commonly call “tacking”.
In the last article I discussed how to finish. Things get a little more confusing if there is a shortened course. I am going to illustrate some of the scenarios. The definition of finish says, “A boat finishes when after starting, any part of her hull crosses the finishing line from the course side.”
Last summer I observed several boats getting confused about where to finish. I am going to illustrate some of the scenarios. The rules are actually quite simple, but the application can sometimes confuse sailors.
During my summer judging, I have heard some strange things about the hails people expect to hear. Last issue I discussed the three hails, “room to tack”, “you tack” and “protest” that are required in the Racing Rules of Sailing. This issue I will continue with other hails that are not required.
During my summer judging, I have heard some strange things about the hails people expect to hear. I thought that I should look at the rulebook, and see which hails are required.
The rules of the game are pretty clear, if you break a rule, you need to take the appropriate penalty. This is listed very early in the rule book before any of the numbered rules under the title “Basic Principles – Sportsmanship and the Rules”.
I have now written three articles about mark-room at a gybe mark. Last time, we talked about situations when you were allowed room to gybe. I finished off showing a case where you are required to gybe.
I have now written two articles about mark-room at a gybe mark. In both cases, the mark denotes a point at which boats would clearly need to assume a different tack to sail to the next mark. We typically call these marks gybe marks.
Last time, I started a discussion of mark-room at a gybe mark. I presented some fairly common scenarios that appear when two boats approach a gybe mark and round together. I am going to continue that discussion this month with some slightly more complicated situations.
This discussion is based on a situation that took place at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (held in the summer of 2021) and some local youth regattas. When I first started to race, if you broke a rule, your only option was to drop out (or be protested out) of the race. This was a severe penalty for a simple incident.
