RRS 2025-28 Rules updates

The Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS) governs the sport of sailboat and sailboard racing. It is revised and published every four years by World Sailing. The current edition is the RRS 2025-2028.

This guidance note aims to provide resources.

One PDF highlights the main changes to the Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS) effective from 1 January 2025.

Below is a PDF for the final RRS 2025 - 2028 containing the subsequent corrections and a PDF of the RYA Guidance to changes.

Also below is a PDF of slides from the Rules evening on 3 April 2025 at Tamesis Club.

And finally there are 'clarifications' of various applications of the Rules from a 'local' perspective. It is important to remember that depending on conditions a given mark is a windward mark or leeward mark for example, and not simply the Canbury mark.

Clarifications

Overtaking to leeward has Rule 11 rights

Starboard boat to port rounding must beware:

A quick rules clarification which might help when sailing in shifty conditions. The scenario is that you find you are close-hauled on starboard coming to a port-hand windward mark. You have Rule 11 ROW as starboard boat. Suddenly you find that you are headed and can no longer lay the mark. You would be correct that your proper course is to round the mark and that to follow your proper course you can luff up. However, once your boat is head to wind, you are considered to be tacking and Rule 13 applies so you therefore must keep clear of other boats including any to windward. The practical point being that there is a limit to which one can rely on momentum and heading up to round a mark. The better approach being to bear away, gybe and re-round (or maybe bang the corner and do a 360). Impeding another boat would be a 720 even if you also hit the mark.

Rounding the Club Mark:

These notes relate to the main image below.

Position 1: approaching Club mark overlapped with Red to leeward, right-of-way ('r-o-w') boat.

Position 2: Red reaches the (3 length) zone overlapped inside Blue. From that point, Red is r-o-w boat entitled to mark-room and Blue is give-way boat, she must keep clear and must give mark-room.

Positions 3 and 4: Both boats sailing to the mark and rounding it. Blue is keeping clear and giving mark-room as required.

Position 5: The mark rounding is complete Red is no longer overlapped on the mark so the mark-room rule no longer applies. Red has started to gybe; as soon as her boom and sail cross the centre-line of the boat she has changed tacks and is now on port and windward of Blue, so Red must keep clear.

Position 6: Red's boom makes contact with Blue's hull as her gybe is completed. Red has broken rule 11 (windward boat keep clear) as she was entirely responsible for putting herself in that position. She has also broken rule 14 (avoiding contact). As these are both Part 2 rules, she can exonerate herself by doing a two-turns penalty in accordance with rule 44.2.

Downloads

• Rules evening v.06 inc corrections (3-April-2025).pdf
• RYA Guidance - Changes to the Racing Rules from January 2025.pdf

Last updated 22:17 on 27 April 2025