US SAILING, the national governing body for the sport, and a prime sponsor, launched a speaker series to help sailors keep up with sailing rules and techniques. The grassroots, educational series delivers high quality seminars to sailors nationwide and is hosted by select sailing organizations and yacht clubs. Seattle Yacht Club was selected as one of the host organizations for the region and the event was open to all comers.

The 2005 Speaker Series features as many as ten events a year on a number of subjects from sail racing rules to Olympic competitor sailing tips. When the series came to Seattle, the topic was “Understanding the new racing rules.” The racing rules seminar allowed sailors to interact directly with a prominent expert from the US Sailing rules committee - Dick Rose. The new 2005-2008 racing rules discussed went into effect on January 1, 2005.

With this year's racing season upon us, Dick Rose not only provided a thorough review of new rules changes and discussed racing situations that commonly appear at protest meetings, but he also gave us a quick reference tool he created for rapidly identifying what rules apply in a situation on the water.

With permission from Dick Rose, you can see and print out this very helpful reference document. Click here to see the document Dick Rose created.

For more information on the 2005-2008 Racing Rules of Sailing:

Click here to see the US Sailing Official Racing Rules of Sailing webpage.

Click here to see links to additional resources and links.