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Yacht racing is the sport of competitive sailing. There is a broad variety of kinds of races and sailboats used for racing. Much racing is done around buoys or similar marks in protected waters, while some longer offshore races cross open water. All kinds of boats are used for racing, including small dinghies, catamarans, boats designed primarily for cruising, and purpose-built raceboats.

Types of races

Harbour or buoy racing

Harbour or buoy races are conducted in protected waters, and are quite short, usually taking anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. All sorts of sailing craft are used for these races, including keelboats of all sizes, as well as dinghies, catamarans, skiffs, sailboards, and other small craft. A competition, or regatta, usually consists of multiple individual races, where the boat that performs best in each race is the overall winner. The most famous such event is the America's Cup, but harbour races are common anywhere there is a community of sailors.

This kind of race is most commonly run over one or more laps of a triangular course marked by a number of buoys. The course starts from an imaginary line drawn from a 'committee boat' to the designated 'starting' buoy or 'pin'. A number of warning signals are given telling the crews exactly how long until the race starts. The aim of each crew is to cross the start line at full speed exactly as the race starts. A course generally involves tacking upwind to a 'windward' marker or buoy. Then bearing away onto a downwind leg to a second jibe marker. Next another jibe on a second downwind leg to the last mark which is called the 'downwind mark' (or 'leeward mark'). At this mark the boats turn into wind once again to tack to the finish line.

Offshore racing

Offshore yacht races are held over long distances and in open water; such races usually last for at least a number of days. The longest offshore races involve a circumnavigation of the world.

Some of the most famous offshore races are the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, the Transpacific Yacht Race, the Fastnet race, the Bermuda Race, and the West Marine Pacific Cup. Several fully-crewed round-the-world races are held, including the Volvo Ocean Race (formerly called the Whitbread Round the World Race), the Global Challenge and the Clipper Round the World Race.

Single-handed ocean yacht racing begain with the race across the Atlantic Ocean by William Albert Andrews and Josiah W. Lawlor in 1891; however, the first regular single-handed ocean race was the Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race, first held in 1960. The first round-the-world yacht race was the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race of 1968-1969, which was also a single-handed race; this inspired the present-day VELUX 5 Oceans Race (formerly the BOC Challenge / Around Alone) and the Vendée Globe. Single-handed racing has seen a great boom in popularity in recent years.

There is some controversy about the legality of sailing single-handed over long distances, as the navigation rules require "that every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper lookout..."; single-handed sailors can only keep a sporadic lookout, due to the need to sleep, tend to navigation, etc.

Other races

Certain races do not fit in the above categories. One such is the Three peaks yacht race in the UK which is a team competition involving sailing, cycling and running.

Classes and ratings

Many design factors have a large impact on the speed at which a boat can complete a course, including the size of a boat's sails, its length, and the weight and shape of its hull. Because of these differences, it can be difficult to compare the skills of the sailors in a race if they are sailing very different boats. For most forms of yacht racing, one of two solutions to this problem are used; either all boats are required to be identical (a one-design class), or a handicapping system is used. A third approach is the use of "open" classes.

In one-design racing all boats must conform to the same standard, the class rules. In this way the boats are as identical as they can be manufactured, thus emphasizing the skill of the skipper and crew. Examples of popular classes include Etchells, Snipe, Star, Soling, Thistle, Lightning, Laser, and J/24. Each class has a detailed set of specifications that must be met for the boat to be considered a member of that class. At important regattas the boats are measured prior to the event to ensure that they do conform.

When all the yachts in a race are not members of the same class, then a handicap is used to adjust the times of boats. The handicap attempts to specify a "normal" speed for each boat, usually based either on measurements taken of the boat, or on the past record of that kind of boat. Each boat is timed over the specified course. After it has finished, the handicap is added to each boat's finishing time. The results are based on this sum.

An open class is based on a box rule, which specifies a maximum overall size for boats in the class, as well as features such as stability. Competitors in these classes are then free to enter their own boat designs, as long as they do not exceed the box rule. No handicap is then applied. Since it is essentially based on the use of custom boats, such events are generally limited to high-budget racers. Popular examples of open classes are the Open 50 and 60 classes used in single-handed offshore events.