Fleet Racing on RegattaWeb
This is the last of our introductions to RegattaWeb, the platform built by sailors, race officers, umpires and judges to elevate the ease of running events. We started with match racing and then team racing. Today it is fleet racing, where most of us learned to race.
Fleet racing is the heart of the sport, from Wednesday night beer cans to world championships. It is also where running an event gets busy: a dozen classes crossing one line, ratings to check, discards to apply, and a protest room that can change the results after the last boat is in. RegattaWeb runs all of it.
From the First Entry
Sailors enter from a phone with no account needed, and their boat, clubs and rating come in from last time. Entry fees are paid straight to your club, and Your Entry shows each sailor what is left to do.
Every Fleet, Every Class
One Design, Time on Time and Time on Distance. Identical boats for pure boat-handling and tactics, corrected time from each boat's rating for mixed fleets around the buoys, and a time allowance for every mile of the course for distance and coastal racing.
Many classes, one event. Score J/24s, PHRF A and ILCA 7s together, and each class gets its own standings, its own discards and its own race numbers.
Six rating systems, set class by class: PHRF, ORC, IRC, ORR, ORR-EZ and Local Handicap. Know which certificate every boat races under, and who checked it.
Category awards, properly scored. Corinthian, Junior, Women and Masters scored as real divisions, never filtered by hand afterwards.
On the Finish Line
The Tally. Call a bow number and the next place is already waiting. A boat nobody could read keeps her place until she is named, and the Tally says when every boat is in.
A whole evening on one screen. A dozen classes crossing one line? Record the whole night from one screen, each class under its own start.
No signal? No problem. Every finish is saved on the phone the moment you take it, and sends itself when the signal comes back. DNF, RET, OCS and DNS are one tap each.
No phone on the water? Print the day's finish sheets, a page per class and race. Enter a filled sheet later, and its QR code opens the right race.
The gun, set and corrected. Set the gun for a whole class, and correct a missed or mistimed gun even after the race finishes.
Scored to Appendix A, Rule by Rule
Every scoring abbreviation in Appendix A can be recorded, each scored as the rule states it.
Low-point, high-point or bonus-point scoring, with discards that open when your Notice of Race says they do. One race or a whole season, scored the same way.
Ties broken by A8, and corrected time worked to the second, time on time or time on distance, class by class.
Redress and decided points go in exactly as decided, and a scoring penalty as the decision states it: 20%, 30%, places or points.
The Protest Room, from Filing to Final Result
What the jury decides and what the race committee confirms is exactly what everyone reads.
File the way sailors know. Hearing requests on the US Sailing form, word for word, with or without an account. The jury enters a paper form for whoever handed one in.
Time limits as your Sailing Instructions state them, from docking or a fixed time. Docking times go in easily, and the race committee's actions (OCS, NSC, BFD and UFD) are posted to the Notice Board on the right form.
Hearings scheduled from the case. Post the Protest Hearings sheet, and put a hearing board on a monitor at the venue.
Decisions in standard wording. The jury writes its decision in US Sailing's Preferred Standard Wording: 211 published wordings, each citing its rule.
One step to the scores. The report to the scorer changes the result and the standings in one step, with no retyping between the protest room and the results.
Questions to the jury. Competitors ask from a public page, and each answer stays private or goes to the whole fleet.
The Notice Board. The Notice of Race, the Sailing Instructions and every amendment, beside the protest notices, in one place sailors already check.
A Deliberate Finish
Spectators never see a half-scored race. A race reads Scoring until the race committee posts it, and the results become Official from a checklist and a two-second hold. Reopen a race for up to two hours, with a reason, and it locks itself again.
While the racing is on, the standings separate the places that are settled from the ones still being decided. First place reads Leader until the race committee confirms the event, then Champion.
Close Out confirms each class final, with any open hearings and protest time listed first. A race that was never sailed is marked not sailed, with its reason. Tell competitors when the final results are in, build the World Sailing results file for the whole event from one page, and every change stays on the record: who changed what, when and why.
Conditions on Every Event Page
Wind, waves and sea temperature on the event page, measured at the nearest station hour by hour and refreshed every 15 minutes on race day, with typical conditions for an event still weeks away.
The Whole Series, on One Platform
That completes our introductions: match racing, team racing and fleet racing, each scored to its own appendix of the Racing Rules of Sailing, all in one place your sailors already know.
And if your regatta brings more than one discipline to the water, talk to us: multi-discipline events come as a custom package, with one roster, one running order and one combined leaderboard.
If you are running a fleet race this season, from a Wednesday night series to a championship, RegattaWeb is ready for it, from the first entry to the final standings.
