Racing Overview

Regattas are competitive events that consist of a series of races involving a multitude of competitors from different schools or clubs. Regattas are usually held on Saturdays as single day events, but some major regattas are two day events. Occasionally a regatta may call for overnight travel when held at distant locations.

Each regatta is hosted by a yacht club or school team and issues a Notice of Race (NoR) which describes how the race will be governed and provides important info including registration details, competition format and schedules. All regattas abide by the same Racing Rules of Sailing issued by US Sailing which governs all sailboat races that are held in the United States.

Teams decide in which regattas they will compete. Some regattas have restrictions on the number of competitors or require teams to qualify by winning other "qualifiers" in order to be accepted.

The object of the race, naturally, is to beat the other boats. Each boat is awarded points based on how they finish each race. For the most part, high school regattas are scored using what is known as a "low-point" system. In low-point scoring, a first place boat would get one point and a 5th place boat would get five points. The boat with the best cumulative points in the series (regatta) wins.

There are two basic formats for high school regattas: Fleet and Team

Fleet racing generally consists of teams of 4 or more sailors sailing two boats in an A and B division. Only one division races at a time and this switching between fleets is called a "rotation". A team's score is calculated by adding their results from the two divisions to give them an overall score.

Team racing consists of a team of 6 or more sailors sailing three boats in a a series of head to head competitions against other teams. The winner of the head to head competition is determined by the best combined finishes of their three boats. The team with the better combined score is awarded a win. The team with the best win/loss record in a regatta wins. These tend to be very tactical encounters.

MISSA organizes High School regattas into three tiers with tier 1 being the most competitive and tier 3 being the least. Tier 1 and 2 regattas largely comprise the various National Championships and Invitationals.

Teams earn points for each regatta that go toward their season ranking. Performance points are awarded based on the tier of the regatta and number of boats.

Tier 3 Regattas encompasses all other MISSA sanctioned events that are not Tier 1 or 2. Tier 3 regattas are considered more fun and focused on development, therefore they offer more flexibility allowing students to form “mixed teams” of students from different school teams. Mixed teams do not count toward season rankings.

A student can individually choose to participate on a “mixed team” for any tier-3 event. This is sometimes the case when a student wants to race with friends from another school or participate in an event separate from the team. In these instances, they are not competing as the MUDJ sailing team, but being a rostered member of an ISSA team is a requirement.