Welcome to RegattaWeb
RegattaWeb is one place to run your racing and see your results, built by sailors, race officers, umpires and judges, to elevate the ease of running events, from Wednesday night beer cans to world championships. Fleet, match and team racing all run on it today. Over the next few days we will introduce each of them in turn, and we are starting with match racing.
Why We Built It
Running a regatta still means a stack of tools that were never made for each other: a form for entries, a spreadsheet for scoring, printouts on the notice board, and a race committee doing arithmetic at the end of a long day on the water. Sailors wait on the dock for results that should already be on their phones.
We think the volunteers and competitors should have better than that. So we built one platform that takes an event from the first entry to the final standings, and treats the rules as seriously as the people racing under them.
What We Believe
Every discipline has its own rulebook. Fleet, match and team racing are each scored by their own appendix of the Racing Rules of Sailing, rule by rule, never squeezed into one generic table.
Fair to every sailor. Rotations, boat assignments and tie-breaks are worked out so nobody can point at the sheet afterwards and say it cost them the day.
Fast for the race committee. Score from a phone on a pitching committee boat, keep scoring when the signal drops, and finish the day with the results already done.
Results for everyone, and only what is decided. Sailors on the dock, coaches on the water and families at home follow the same results the race committee records. A place shows only once it is decided, and results become Official when the race committee says so.
First Up: Match Racing
Match racing is sailing at its most direct: two boats, one start, and every move answered by the other boat. It is also one of the most demanding events to run well, with flights to schedule, boats to swap, umpire calls to record and a tie-break order that has to be exactly right. RegattaWeb runs all of it.
From the First Invitation
Teams ask for an invitation online, you review the requests on a board, and accepted teams confirm from a link. Nobody needs an account to get in.
Every Format, in One Event
Round Robin, Knockout and King of the Hill, chained from a seeding round robin through the knockouts to the final. In King of the Hill, win and you move up a place; lose and you drop one.
Stages side by side. Run a Gold and a Silver round robin at the same time, sharing one pool of boats.
Up to five passes of a round robin, with Blue and Yellow swapped on alternate passes, and a later round robin reseeded from the earlier one so the matchups that matter most sail first.
Choose who sails each stage, or build it from the racing: the top teams, a band of places, or everyone who advanced from the stage before. Create the Semi Finals before the round robin ends, with spots like DRR 1st that fill in as the results come in.
Rotations Built for Fairness
A match race should be decided on the water, never by the schedule. RegattaWeb has 70 rotations ready to sail, covering every combination from 4 to 16 skippers against 4 to 16 boats. Every one is built for efficiency and fairness: even boat use, balanced Blue and Yellow entries, and as few boat changes as possible.
Plan draws, boat swaps and spares across every stage. Any clash over a boat is flagged before it reaches the water, a broken boat is swapped for a spare in the matches it has left, and you can move boats by hand, with undo.
The sheets are printed two ways. The race committee's rotation and pairing sheets show every boat swap and who is sitting out, flight by flight. Each team's sheet is simplified to show only its own races, when it sits out and when it changes boats. Every sheet carries a code to scan.
Bring your own, too. Load the rotation your club has run for years from a spreadsheet and reuse it every season.
Scored to Appendix C, Rule by Rule
Every point from the rule that awards it. Wins, losses and dead heats under C10.1, incomplete round robins under C10.3 and C10.4 with penalties counted, knockouts won on penalty-adjusted points under C10.6, and failure to sail the course under C10.7.
Ties broken by the book. The full C11.1 order, each step naming the clause it applied. A round robin tie the rules cannot break goes to the Organizing Authority, who decides it by sail-off or by decision, recorded with who decided and how.
A stage ended early, scored correctly. When the weather calls time, end the stage and the incomplete series is scored to the rules, not thrown away.
Finishes and Umpire Calls, Recorded as They Were Made
Blue, ½ or Yellow. Every match card has one labelled button for each result, so a thumb resting on the screen records nothing.
Penalties that cite their rule, from rule 14 to C8.3, each showing the change to the points and the standings before it is confirmed.
Why a match ended is on the record: the ground, the deciding body and any hearing. And when a call goes to the protest room, the jury's decision reaches the standings in one step. We will open the full protest room in our fleet racing post.
Standings That Show Their Work
While the racing is on, the standings separate the places that are settled from the ones still being decided, and say in plain words what is left to sail. First place reads Leader until the race committee confirms the event, then Champion, and the standings explain how it was won: on points, on a named tie-break, in a sail-off, or by clinching.
Every format is drawn in its own form: round robin grids, knockout brackets and King of the Hill ladders. Star a team and the board narrows to its races, and every competitor has a page of their own.
Club TV Mode: The Racing on the Clubhouse Screen
Match racing is made for watching, and Club TV Mode puts it on the television over the bar. The round robin grid fills in as the matches finish, the flights on the water are marked as they sail, and once the finals begin it shows the knockout bracket. It runs all day with no laptop and no one at the controls: one passphrase puts a screen on the wall, and it follows the racing on its own.
Coming Up in This Series
Match racing is the first of three introductions. Over the next few days:
Team racing. Two, three and four boats a side, scored to Appendix D, with rotations as fair as the ones above and the clubhouse screen to match.
Fleet racing. One-design and handicap fleets scored to Appendix A, from Wednesday night beer cans to championships, and the full protest room: hearing requests, the jury's decisions in standard wording, and results that change in one step.
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.
Every discipline scored to its own rulebook, all in one place your sailors already know. If you are running a match race this season, RegattaWeb is ready for it, from the first invitation to the final standings.
