Sailing - Yatch Clubs

Many town yacht clubs maintain their own racing teams for both juniors and adults. Often several yacht clubs will get together to hold events that can include more than 100 entered boats per race making up the regatta. Although oftentimes both adults and juniors sail the same classes of boat, junior classes usually consist of Optimist and 420's on the east coast, and of Naples Sabots and CFJ's (club Flying Juniors) on the west coast, and, universally, Lasers that are broken down further depending on skill and age levels. Age levels are usually from 8-18 for juniors and then 19-64 for adults. Senior classes are popular on the west coast and tend to be held in Naples Sabots, an 8' design that was founded in the Long Beach/Naples area and is an extremely popular west coast boat.

Sailing - Match Racing

In match racing only two boats compete against each other. The best known competition of this type is the America's Cup. The tactics involved in match racing are different from those of other races, because the objective is merely to arrive at the finish line before the opponent, which is not necessarily as fast as possible. The tactics involved at the start are also special. With a large enough fleet, the winning boat will generally be the one that finds the fastest possible way around the course. In contrast, match racers will only concentrate on crossing the line before their opponent: this sometimes means taking a route that's not the fastest possible, for example in order to slow down their opponent. Two tactics that arise from this mind-set are tight coverage and drawing fouls.

By tight coverage, the lead boat will attempt to stay as close as possible to its opponent while staying in front. For example, if on a downwind leg the losing boat gybes towards the right side of the course the winning boat will gybe towards the right side of the course as well even though the left side of the course appears to be favored. That way the winning boat is insured against losing the lead due to a wind shift that favors the right side of the course. In fleet racing there will often be boats on both sides of the course, requiring the lead boat to sail on the side that it considers to be fastest.

Drawing fouls is also an important part of match racing. As fouls in sailboat racing penalize the offending boat but do not advantage the fouled boat, drawing a foul in fleet racing is almost always a net loss. However when there are only two boats on the course any penalty for one boat is an advantage for the other. Therefore in match racing a boat will often try to put itself in a position where the other boat will have no option but to foul it or make a disadvantageous change in course, even at the cost of sailing a slower course itself.

On occasion, one boat in a fleet race may only care about her performance relative to one other boat in the fleet. For example, near the end of a long series, two boats may be so far ahead of the rest of the fleet in the standings, that no other boats are capable of catching them. Thus, Boat A will win the series as long as they place better than Boat B in the last race, regardless of whether they come in first and second or ninth and tenth. Boat A may then employ match racing tactics against Boat B, even though they are racing under fleet racing rules.

Sailing - Offshore Racing

Offshore yacht races are held over long distances and in open water; such races usually last for at least a number of hours. The longest offshore races involve a circumnavigation of the world.

Some of the most famous offshore races are the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, the Transpacific Yacht Race, the Fastnet race, the Bermuda Race, the 2005 Rolex Transatlantic Challenge, Hamilton Island Race Week, the West Marine Pacific Cup and the Bayview Yacht Club North Channel Race. Several fully-crewed round-the-world races are held, including the Volvo Ocean Race (formerly called the Whitbread Round the World Race), the Global Challenge and the Clipper Round the World Race. South African yacht clubs organise the South Atlantic Race (the former Cape to Rio race), the Governor's Cup from Cape Town to St. Helena Island, and a race between Durban and Mauritius.

The first round-the-world yacht race was the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race of 1968-1969, which was also a single-handed race; this inspired the present-day VELUX 5 Oceans Race (formerly the BOC Challenge / Around Alone) and the Vendée Globe. Single-handed racing has seen a great boom in popularity in recent years.

Sailing - Inshore Racing

Inshore racing is yacht racing not in protected waters but along and generally within sight of land or from land to nearby islands, as distinct from offshore racing across open water and oceans. The duration of races maybe daylight only, overnight or passage races of several days. Some races, such as the Swiftsure Yacht Race, are actually a group of inshore races of various distances along overlapping courses to allow for different classes and skills. Depending on location, stability and safety equipment requirements will be more extensive than for harbor racing, but less so than for offshore racing. Different levels of requirement for navigation, sleeping cooking and water storage also apply. These races are suitable for many club racers including Junior Offshore Group (JOG) yachts, and certain trailer sailors meeting race requirements. The Chicago to Mackinac Boat Race is a 333 miles (536 km) freshwater race on Lake Michigan.

Sailing - Types of Races - Harbor Racing

Harbor or buoy races are conducted in protected waters, and are quite short, usually taking anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. All sorts of sailing craft are used for these races, including keel-boats of all sizes, as well as dinghies, trailer sailors, catamarans, skiffs, sailboards, and other small craft. A competition, or regatta, usually consists of multiple individual races, where the boat that performs best in each race is the overall winner. The most famous such event is the America's Cup, but harbor races are common anywhere there is a community of sailors. A notable example is found in Bermuda, where the Bermuda rig, now almost universally-used on small sailing vessels, can still be seen in its purest form in the Bermuda Fitted Dinghy, used for a series of races contested each year by the colony's yacht clubs. Bermuda also played a role in the development of the International One Design.

This kind of race is most commonly run over one or more laps of a triangular course marked by a number of buoys. The course starts from an imaginary line drawn from a 'committee boat' to the designated 'starting' buoy or 'pin'. A number of warning signals are given telling the crews exactly how long until the race starts. The aim of each crew is to cross the start line at full speed exactly as the race starts. A course generally involves tacking upwind to a 'windward' marker or buoy. Then bearing away onto a downwind leg to a second jibe marker. Next another jibe on a second downwind leg to the last mark which is called the 'downwind mark' (or 'leeward mark'). At this mark the boats turn into wind once again to tack to the finish line.

Sailing - Olympic Sport

Sailing is a well organized and recognized sport. There is a broad variety of kinds of races and sailboats used for racing. Much racing is done around buoys or similar marks in protected waters, while some longer offshore races cross open water. All kinds of boats are used for racing, including small dinghies, catamarans, boats designed primarily for cruising, and purpose-built raceboats. The Racing Rules of Sailing govern the conduct of yacht racing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, model boat racing, dinghy racing and virtually any other form of racing around a course with more than one vessel while powered by the wind.