Yacht racing is a sailing sport involving sailing yachts and larger sailboats, as distinguished from dinghy racing, which involves open boats. It is composed of multiple yachts, in direct competition, racing around a course marked by buoys or other fixed navigational devices or racing longer distances across open water from point-to-point. It can involve a series of races with buoy racing or multiple legs when point-to-point racing.
Team racing, also known as team sailing, is a popular form of dinghy racing and yacht racing. Two teams compete in a race, each sailing two to four boats of the same class. The winning team is decided by combining the results of each team's boats. This differs from an inter-club fleet race where boats from three or more clubs compete, with the results of each club's boats combined to determine its overall position.
Dinghy sailing is the activity of sailing small boats by using five essential controls:
Dinghy racing is a competitive sport using dinghies, which are small boats which may be rowboats, have an outboard motor, or be sailing dinghies. Dinghy racing has affected aspects of the modern sailing dinghy, including hull design, sail materials and sailplan, and techniques such as planing and trapezing.
The GP14 is a wooden or fibreglass hulled double-handed fractional Bermuda rigged sailing dinghy designed by Jack Holt in 1949.
Sailing/Yachting is an Olympic sport starting from the Games of the 1st Olympiad. With the exception of the 1904 and the canceled 1916 Summer Olympics, sailing has always been included on the Olympic schedule. The Sailing program of 1908 was open for a total of five sailing classes (disciplines), but actually only four Sailing events were contested. The planned venue of all races, named matches, was Ryde, Isle of Wight.
Bolton Sailing Club is an inland sailing club located close to the village of Belmont in Lancashire to the north of Bolton, Greater Manchester, in the West Pennine Moors. The club sails on Belmont Reservoir which provides a large area of open water for sailing. Bolton SC was one of the first Clubs in the UK to sign up to the RYA OnBoard Scheme and is also an RYA Sailability Foundation club. In 2009, Bolton SC was awarded RYA Champion Club status.
The Sabre Dinghy is a class single-handed sailboat that is 12'4" or 3.76 m long. The boat was designed in 1974 by Rex Fettell, who also designed the Minnow. As of 2017 over 2,000 sail numbers have been issued.
The West Lancashire Yacht Club (WLYC) is a yacht club in Merseyside, England, founded in 1894. In 1999 the club was awarded the status of Volvo/RYA Champion Club, recognising the standard of training and performance of its members in sailing competitions.
The Bermuda Fitted Dinghy is a type of racing-dedicated sail boat used for competitions between the yacht clubs of Bermuda. Although the class has only existed for about 130 years, the boats are a continuance of a tradition of boat and ship design in Bermuda that stretches back to the earliest decades of the 17th century.
The Seabird Half Rater is the oldest one design class still sailing in Britain. It is a 20 ft carvel planked sailing boat, with a design dating back to 1898. As of the 2017 season there have been 101 built [up to No.108]. The class has a Portsmouth Yardstick of 1229.
The Royal Windermere Yacht Club is a sailing club which was founded in 1860, situated at Fallbarrow Road, Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumbria, England.
In 1906 the Star class was designed by George Cockshott for the West Lancashire Yacht Club, as a 'Suitable craft for the young and inexperienced sailor' to be used on Southport marine lake in the winter months. The original boats were built by Lathoms of Hesketh Bank at a cost of £32 each. The first race was won by Carina who completed the course in just over 30 minutes. They raced successfully at Southport for 16 years, with one major exception: the death of three West Lancs YC members after their star, Cygnet, capsized on the return from a day trip to Lytham in 1913, but following World War I there was no effort made to revive the winter racing in Stars on the marine lake. Having previously raced on the Dee numerous times in West Kirby Regattas since 1909 the secretary of the Star class wrote to West Kirby Sailing Club in December 1921 to ask if the club was interested in buying the West Lancashire Yacht Club fleet following problems with silting up of the channel at Southport and a lack of support for the class with most of the junior members moving on to sail in the Seabird Half Rater fleet. A special committee was formed in January 1922 of West Kirby members to consider buying the fleet, after a visit to Southport on 25 February it was agreed to purchase the fleet consisting of: Carina, Capella, Vega, Mars and Venus as a nucleus for a club class, it is not known what happened to the original Stars 1, 2, 3 and 5, other than Iris was sold out of the club for the sum of £30 in 1920 and Cygnet was rebuilt following her accident but never sailed at Southport again. On 24 March a meeting was held at West Kirby for prospective owners for the new Star fleet, as there were 14 prospective owners and only 5 boats available a ballot was held with the winning owners required to pay a 20% deposit of the £40 price tag and sign an agreement that the boat would not be sold outside of the club.
Yachting Association of Sri Lanka (YASL) is recognised by the International Sailing Federation as the governing body for the sport of sailing in Sri Lanka.
The Measle is a small sailing boat, popular in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Twelve Foot Dinghy was designed by George Cockshott, an amateur boat designer from Southport, England in response to a 1912 design contest. It became the first one-design racing dinghy to achieve international recognition. The class was granted the 'International' status by the IYRU in 1919 and remained this status until 1964 when it was revoked by the same authority. The class was selected as the dinghy class for the Olympics in 1920 & 1928. In 1924 the French wanted to use an alternate French design.
The sport of sailing involves a variety of competitive sailing formats that are sanctioned through various sailing federations and yacht clubs. Racing disciplines include matches within a fleet of sailing craft, between a pair thereof or among teams. Additionally, there are specialized competitions that include setting speed records. Racing formats include both closed courses and point-to-point contests; they may be in sheltered waters, coast-wise or on the open ocean. Most competitions are held within defined classes or ratings that either entail one type of sailing craft to ensure a contest primarily of skill or rating the sailing craft to create classifications or handicaps.
The International Cadet Australian Championship is an annual series of championship races held in Australia as the top racing event for the Cadet class sailing dinghy in the country. Generally held as a qualifier for the world cup, the championship will reach its 50th event in 2011 when it will be held at Lake Macquarie in New South Wales from 27 December 2011 to 4 January 2012.
The Skate is a high performance two-person racing dinghy unique to Australia. Designed as a monohull sailboat it's fourteen feet long (4.27m) with a 7.2m mast, 1.8m bow pole and masthead asymmetrical spinnaker. It is an Australian national class.
George Cockshott was born into a legal and sporting family in Southport, where he practised as a solicitor in the family firm of Bucks, Cockshott and Cockshott. His brother Francis was an Athletics Blue in each of his three years at Cambridge as well as working for a time in the family firm. George served as a justice of the peace and was also an active and gifted amateur yacht designer. His claim to fame comes through his design of the 'International' 12 Foot Dinghy. Although the international status of the class was revoked by the IYRU in 1964, it is still raced actively across the world. George retired to Hampshire in later years, dying there in 1953.
