Dinghy Racing at Spinnaker Sailing Club, Programme and Sailing Instructions
Overview
Spinnaker Sailing Club runs a full dinghy race programme starting with the New Year's Day Race and finishing in December, yes we race all year! Most races are only for club members but our most commonly sailed classes all host an Open Meeting each year as well. We also routinely host national level events for external groups such as various team racing events. Our racing programme can broadly be divided up into:
- Club Series - multi-week racing series running on Sundays and Wednesdays
- One-Day Club Events - single day events for club members, normally on bank holiday weekends
- Open Meetings - open to members and visitors alike
- External Events - these are organised by groups such as the University Sailing Clubs, British Schools Dinghy Racing Association or the RYA
An annual Notice of Race is published in December to cover the following year for Club Racing, our Open Meetings and larger championships then have their own Notices of Race. Our Standard Sailing Instructions are the default for all racing at Spinnaker Sailing Club unless event specific instructions are issued. The Notice of Race cover all of the important topics like safety, starting, finishing, the flags and much more. You should be able to read the Sailing Instructions, and turn up and know how to take part, but we strongly encourage everyone to read the Notice of Race as well as this explains lots of important things like the schedule and scoring system.
Guidance for Race Officials is available on the separate tab. This has been updated February 2025.
Calendar/ programme
At the bottom of this page is a PDF which is the Race Programme, and determines what racing runs throughout the year. The website calendar shows all of the race fixtures as well, but is not the definitive source of information. The PDF below shows the start times of races, as well as how long it is intended they last (the Target Time), as well as which series, if any, they are part of.
You will see that we have two main formats for our Club Racing - handicap racing that computes the results using the RYA Portsmouth Yardsticks (PY) basis where each boat type has a Portsmouth Number (PN), and the very popular Pursuit format where there are start times that vary by boat/ sailor and a fixed finish time. For all the details on Pursuit Racing including all start times for each Wednesday race by boat time/ sailor grade, see the separate tab.
Further information
There are lots of good sources of information about dinghy racing. Below are a few links to some we think are really useful. Some of these are on our own website and some are on other websites.
The Racing Rules of Sailing are the overarching rules for how we race - World Sailing Website
Introduction to the Rules Youtube Video this was put together by the RYA back in 2020, but very little has changed since then, particularly at the basic level for those new to racing
Downloads
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Sail Clean Poster.pdf
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2025 Dinghy Racing Programme V2 Easter Day Update.pdf
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Club Racing NoR 2025.pdf
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Club Racing SI 2025.pdf
Last updated 08:33 on 11 February 2025