Revised versions of the Standard Notice of Race and Standard Sailing Instructions for match racing events have been published on the ISAF website.

The quick and simple Word templates for the rules of your match racing event, based on the ISAF Racing Rules of Sailing are available to download from the match racing documentation section at: http://www.sailing.org/sailors/860.php

From time to time, these documents are revised to ensure that they reflect the best current practices. There are four important changes in the 2011 versions.

1. The guideline document:’Match Racing Penalties for Damage Resulting from Contact between Boats’ has been added as new SI Appendix E, and relevant references are now included in SI 1.5 and NoR 7.2. By using these guidelines, competitors will find consistency between events in how questions about damage are being handled. The number of hearings at events is likely to be reduced as a consequence.

Note that these guidelines do not address any questions about costs for damage and/or damage deposits - this is a matter between the OA and the skipper, and responsibilities for damage or loss to boats will be decided as described in SI 2.

2. In SI 18(c) and (e), Code of Conduct, references to undesirable behaviour, such as excessive attempts to verbally coerce, coach or influence umpire decisions, repetitive objection to an umpire decision or abuse of umpires before or after a decision, are included. This SI makes it clear that the umpires may penalize directly on the water or report to the jury/protest committee when this behaviour happens.

3. In SI Appendix B - Event Format and Schedule of Races; a separate stage has been indicated for any repechage sailed. This is important with regard to scoring and to avoid problems with tie breaking.

4. The last important change is that new NoR 6.3 contains the statement from the ISAF Regulations 24.2.2(d) about withdrawing from an event. By adding this statement into the Standard NoR, all competitors will be reminded that all graded events have the option of reporting to the ISAF when a competitor accepts an invitation but then withdraws within two months of the event or when a competitor leaves an event before the event is completed, without the written approval of the OA. In such cases, the competitors may receive a ’zero score’ for that event. Competitors not showing up at events has turned into a big problem as events struggle to meet the grading criteria announced. This could be a problem (or at least a disappointment) for the competitors coming to the event that expect the event to have a certain grading and who have expectations about the format and level of competition.

5. NoR and SI 15, new instructions when restrictions for coach boats are appropriate have been included.

In addition to these five important changes, there are many minor changes throughout the document. Those changes are mostly changes of style or wording, but they do not affect the way events are run.

Organizers are advised to use this new template when creating their NoR and SIs for 2011, rather than just picking up last years documents and changing the dates.

Click here to download the Standard Notice of Race for Match Racing

Click here to download the ISAF Standard Sailing Instructions for Match Racing

Click here for the ISAF Racing Rules of Sailing

ISAF Match Racing Microsite
(From the ISAF website: www.sailing.org