ISAF has made available a new annotated rulebook to help sailors and officials understand the reasons for each significant change in the 2013 rulebook.

Click here to download a PDF of the Racing Rules of Sailing 2013-2016 Study Version. Stay tuned to future issues of Sailing World, and our website, for articles from Dick Rose going into even greater depth on the new rules.

Here are some notes from Dick Rose, Chairman of the Racing Rules Working Party:

Changes in the racing rules are the result of Submissions made to ISAF from Member National Authorities, ISAF Class Associations and ISAF Committee Chairmen. Each Submission to change a racing rule contains three sections: a Proposal, showing exactly how the author would like to change a particular racing rule, the Current Position, which is the current wording of the rule, and the Reasons for proposing the change. In the proposal, new wording is shown in bold and underlined and deleted words are shown struck through. Studying the Reasons for the Proposal in the original Submission that led to a rule change should help you understand why that rule change was made.

Please note that some new rules in the 2013 rulebook are not worded exactly as they were worded in the original proposal. These changes in wording were made, usually by the Racing Rules Working Party, for clarity, for ease of translation, or to make the new rule consistent with other rules in the rulebook.

The document "Study Version of the Racing Rules for 2013-2016" begins with The Racing Rules of Sailing for 2013-2016, with all wording that is new in 2013 shown in green. The last section of the document is a 106-page Addendum containing all the original submissions for changes in the racing rules that were approved by the ISAF Council.

The last word of each new (green) section of a racing rule is shown underlined and in a colour other than green. Each of these underlined words contains a hyperlink to the original Submission that led to the particular rule change. Simply left click on the hyperlink and the original Submission for that rule change will appear on your screen. In a few cases, when two submissions led to a particular rule change, you will find an underlined hyperlink in the first Submission that, if clicked, will take you to the second submission that led to that rule change.

I hope you find this document helpful!