Every 4 years the rules get updated, usually following the Olympics, but this time it will change before the games – World Sailing correctly balanced the needs of the 250 Olympic sailors (who should be at the top of the game) with the thousands of other sailors that need and expect the rule changes to come in.
The rule changes can be split into two types and three stakeholder groups:
- Group – Most significantly impacts Sailors
- Group – Most significantly impacts Officials
- Group – Significantly impacts Sailors and Officials
- Type 1 -A change to the rules operation.
- Type 2 A tidy up/ ease of use / housekeeping change
We’re going to focus on the Type 1 rule changes – except if we can find something interesting about a Type 2 change, like it was inspired by a Couta Boat incident or need….
Leading up to the Introduction of the rule changes, we will be highlighting changes to the rules, but if in lockdown you have mastered sourdough and completed all your 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, then you can read ahead with all the changes.
At the moment there are three good sources of information on the changes.
RRS 2021-24
This is the new rule book, with some significant changes marked in the margin, available as a PDF.
Study Version of the RRS 2021-24.
This is the rules geeks version, it has every change to the rules and a note about why it changed, including a reference to the submission to World Sailing that caused the change (So you can read why they made the change) – Caution – it can cause drowsiness – do not operate machinery while using this version.
Captain Tango’s Summary of the Changes
This is pretty cool (to some people anyway) – It’s a summary and comment of all of the changes (excluding the Appendices)
To help us in ISO, we’re going to start sharing the important changes for sailors and our officials – we’re happy to have a bit of banter on any of the changes.
So we will start putting Bulletins out which will have an Impact Sailors change and an Impacts Officials change in each edition.
We have also started a WhatsApp group where we can talk about the changes click this link to join – https://chat.whatsapp.com/CKxBYsew1JTBPcoE0h1rA0 – We will make members that we recognise Admins of the group, and only Admins can send messages to others – That will keep the Russian Dating sites at arms length.
Here is RRS Changes Bulletin 01
