colors regatta yacht scoring

SKYWAY YACHT WORKS

Colors regatta.

WHAT IS COLORS?

COLORS has been Chicago’s shake-the-sheets event since 1995. More than 100 boats race annually during the first weekend of June. The strong one-design presence of the Beneteau, J/Boat, Tartan-10 and other large fleets designates the event as a tune-up for the season. 

In addition to a weekend of buoy racing, the regatta has a distance race on Saturday. The distance race is attracts the boats that are too large to go around the buoys as well as the more casual racers and even cruisers. 

Racing is not the only factor that makes for  a good regatta, though. The social side is equally as important, and Columbia is well-versed in having a good time. The big annual regatta party takes place on Saturday with tasty  food, amazing libations and live band. Also enjoy a easy going Sunday wrap up party 

C olumbia O ne- L evel O ffshore R acing S eries

About columbia yacht club.

Columbia Yacht Club offers activities and amenities for everyone. The member community is home for racers, cruisers, day sailors, power boaters and anyone who enjoys our unique venue on the water. 

Members of Columbia enjoy sailing, social and assisting the community. Sailing and other boating opportunities range from big boats to dinghies. Columbia also has a jam-packed social schedule that runs year-round, beginning the year with the Chili Cook-Off, partying on the dock all summer and capping things off with an elegant New Year’s Eve Gala. In addition to all this fun, the Club supports over 60 non-profit efforts here in Chicago including the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Judd Goldman Adaptive Sailing and the Columbia Sailing School. 

In the summer, Columbia is most well-known for hosting the Wednesday night Beer Can Series with 100 boats on the line each week. The club also hosts several weekend and high school/college races. Columbia's efforts on the water and ashore are always expanding and improving. 

Learn more about Columbia Yacht Club

Saturday, June 1

Buoy & distance racing followed by a regatta party & awards.

Enjoy a fun and competitive day of buoy and distance racing with nearly 150 boats. 

After the racing, meet us at Columbia Yacht Club for an over the top post-regatta party with Revolution Brewing,   Gosling's Rum and Jackson Family Wines. Skyway Yacht Works a,d Columbia's galley crew team up to put out a summer spread with seafood, upscale BBQ and more. All regatta participants eat for free. 

Additional fun and prizes provided by our other great sponsors, Quantum Sails

Sunday, June 2

Buoy followed by a regatta wrap party & awards.

Enjoy another fun and competitive day of buoy racing with nearly 150 boats. 

After the racing, meet us again at Columbia Yacht Club for an over the top post-regatta party with Revolution Brewing , Gosling's Rum and Jackson Family Wines. Skyway Yacht Works and Columbia's galley crew team up to put out a summer grill out style buffet. All regatta participants eat for free. 

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Phone: 312 - 938 - 3625

Email:  COLORS @colyc.org

COLUMBIA YACHT CLUB

111 N. Lake Shore Drive

Chicago, IL:, 60601

DIRECTIONS /PARKING

Parking at DuSable

Public Transit

2024 COLORS Regatta

Saturday, June 1 & Sunday, June 2

Table of Contents

• points equal to the average, to the nearest tenth of a point (0.05 to be rounded upward), of her points in all the races in the series except the race in question;
• points equal to the average, to the nearest tenth of a point (0.05 to be rounded upward), of her points in all the races before the race in question; or
• points based on the position of the boat in the race at the time of the incident that justified redress. 

Previous Versions

Last updated.

Kanata Sailing Club

How scoring works – appendix a demystified.

The Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS) contains a suggested mechanism for scoring at regattas, detailed in Appendix A of the rules.  A regatta doesn’t have to use this mechanism (the Sailing Instructions, or SIs, for the regatta will describe the scoring system) but Appendix A is a popular choice.  This article describes how Appendix A works, and talks about the changes to Appendix A that KSC uses for our weekly race series.

In simple terms, you get one point for being first, two points for being second, etc (Rule A4.1).  At the end of the regatta, the boat with the fewest points wins (like golf) (Rule A2.1).

Sounds simple, right?

The devil is, of course, in the details.  What happens if a boat doesn’t race?  What if a person crews for one boat one race, and a different boat the next?  How do “dropped races” work, that kind of thing.

Breaking the Rules

Generally speaking, a boat that breaks a rule (or doesn’t race) is scored as if it finished “last place plus one”.  If there are 10 boats in the regatta, you’d normally expect the scores to be 1 point (for the first place boat) to 10 points (for the last place boat).  If only 8 of the 10 boats participated in the race, they would score 1 to 8 points, and the two boats who did not race are scored 11 points each.

Boats might not race for a number of reasons — maybe the didn’t show up for the race, they were unable start the race in time, they were over the start line early (and didn’t rectify the issue), they had problems and had to leave the race, etc.  Under Appendix A, these situations are generally treated equally (by awarding “last place plus one”).

The other situation where a boat will be scored as “last place plus one” is if the boat is disqualified.  This typically occurs when a boat breaks a rule (maybe it caused a collision when the other boat had right-of-way).  A boat can exonerate itself by doing penalty turns (usually two 360 degree turns) as soon as it is able to safely do so.  If a boat doesn’t do its turns, it may be disqualified and awarded “last place plus one”.

There are other conditions which could cause a change to a score.  The judge could decide to award someone a score based on where they would have likely finished if a boat were interfered with, or a boat may be penalized a certain number of points for some types of infractions.  Generally speaking these cases are quite rare, but you should know that they do exist.

Some common “scores” which you’ll see on a scoring sheet:

Dropped Scores

Everyone has a bad race now and then.  Furthermore, maybe there was a tough situation and you got disqualified for breaking a rule one race.  This might not make a big difference in a regatta with only a few boats, but in a big regatta with 50+ boats, then having one bad score can completely kill your chances of placing well.

Enter “dropped scores”.  This lets you ignore your worst scores from the regatta.  Appendix A allows you to ignore your worst score in the series (Rule A2.1), although it is more typical for the SIs to specify a number of scores to exclude based on the number of races sailed.  This might be worded something like “excluding her worst score when 5 – 11 races are scored, or her two worst scores when 12 or more races are scored”.

In regattas, one dropped score per five or six races is typical, whereas weekly race series often allow for more dropped scores.

Boats and people

One final thing to note about Appendix A (and the RRS in general) is that they talk about a boat as the entity participating.  In other words, the people on the boat don’t matter, it’s the boat that races.  Let’s say you have an Albacore with sail number 8034.  The Albacore’s place will be scored in each race regardless of who is skipper, who is crew, etc.  At the end of the regatta, it’s the score that “Albacore 8034” has which determines it’s position.  For most regattas, this is fine — the boat will typically be skippered and crewed by the same people for every race.

Kanata Sailing Club Races – Changes from Appendix A

KSC took the Appendix A rules, and makes a few adjustments to suit our needs.  The first big one is that we score people, and not boats.  At KSC race nights, where we have people constantly changing boats from one week to the next, scoring a boat doesn’t really work.  Our solution is to have every sailor pretend to be a boat (as far as scoring is concerned), and we score each sailor as if they finished in the place their boat did.

Let’s say that Alice, Bob, Charlie, and David are racing.  Bob is crewing for Charlie.  In the first race, Alice finishes first, Bob and Charlie second, and David third.  Alice gets one point, Bob and Charlie each get two points, and David gets three.  In the next race, David wins, followed by Alice, and finally Bob/Charlie.  David gets one point, Alice two, Bob/Charlie three.  The total score at the end of the second race is: Alice (3 points), David (4 points), Bob (5 points), Charlie (5 Points).  Scoring can continue from there the next week even if Bob and Charlie sail in different boats, or Alice/David sail together, etc.

The second change we make is that we allow for a lot of dropped scores.  We might be changing the ratio in the future, but as of 2016 we allowed for 1 dropped score for every 4 races scored.  This means that if you miss a week you’re not overly penalized.  But it also means that you do have to show up for a few weeks and score consistently well during those weeks to win the series.

Unlike a regatta, we don’t know how many people will show up over the course of the series.  On a good night we might have 10 boats racing (maybe 3-4 Lasers, 3-4 Albacores, a Byte, maybe a 29er or Hobie Cat, etc).  Basically, we figured that we probably won’t have 15 boats.  We chose the number 15 as a the score for people who don’t show up (“DNC” or “Did not come to starting area”) so people who don’t show up get an automatic “15th place”.

A final change we made is that we thought it would be better to reward those who made an effort to race above those who didn’t show up.  Boats who are disqualified, do not start in time, forced to retire, etc are awarded points better than the 15 points awarded to those who didn’t start. In the following table, the number of points “n” indicates the number of points for the last boat who finished the race normally.  Note that even if we do have an abnormally huge number of boats racing, your score will not be higher than 15.