The Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS) are revised and published every four years by World Sailing, the international authority for the sport.
The RYA makes prescriptions to the RRS and publishes the RRS together with the prescriptions and other addenda in the RYA booklet YR1.
The Racing Rules of Sailing can be downloaded from the World Sailing website.
Member National Authorities (the RYA for the UK) are allowed to make variations to certain areas within the rules - to be known as 'National Prescriptions'. The RYA prescriptions can be downloaded in isolation.
The RRS together with the RYA prescriptions can be purchased as an RYA publication RYA Racing Rules of Sailing.
The changes introduced in 2021 are described in the RYA Racing Rules Guidance Book.
Changes
and Corrections to the Rules
From time
to time, World sailing publishes corrections and urgent changes to the RRS. The
latest changes were published in December 2020.
Questions and Answers on the Rules
There will always be questions on what the rules mean and how they should be interpreted. World Sailing offer a Q&A service and publish updates of these regularly.
Future Changes
The process for changing the rules in the future is prolonged as you may expect. Anyone with a 'good idea' may submit a proposal to the Racing Rules Committee. This proposal will then be considered, together with the implications it may have on other rules within the RRS. This first stage itself can be a complicated process. The refined proposal will then, if considered appropriate, be put before the RYA Racing Committee before it is presented to the RYA Council. If the 'good idea' has survived this process it will then be submitted to World Sailing for consideration along with other 'good ideas' from around the world.
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