First Time Guide — An essential guide to joining the Bay Regatta.
Entries
The event is open to boats eligible to complete in the classes as published in the Notice of Race paragraph 3. To help with the safety and integrity of the event, and in compliance with the statement from World Sailing to be found HERE .Boats and competitors shall not display any sail letters, symbols, flags on any boat, competitor or place associated with the event. The penalty for a breach of this rule will be exclusion from further participation in the event and the removal of the boat from the results.
Entry to The Bay Regatta can now be made online.
The Provisional Notice of Regatta for the event is published in October 2025. It should be noted that we give an early bird discounted entry fee to those who enter and pay prior to the 1st January 2025. For payment received after this date a late entry fee is applied.
ANY LATE CREW CHANGES WILL BE SUBJECT TO OFFICIAL APPROVAL.
Any updates to the NOR will be published in the Regatta documents section
Rating Systems
If you are entering one of the handicap classes (IRC for monohulls - including bareboats and sportsboats, OMR for multihulls or NHC for cruising boats) then you will need to obtain an up-to-date rating. However, you can enter The Bay Regatta before you have your rating - please just make sure you allow enough time for the administration to go through.
The Bay Regatta uses three different rating systems, IRC and NHC for monohulls and OMR for multihulls. These give good racing within the handicap classes to boat types where there are not enough of them to have their own one-design class. Details of the systems are provided below:
The OMR rating system is used by offshore multihulls and is administered in Thailand by Mark Pescott who can be contacted at HERE. Typically about a dozen of these fast and exciting boats take part in The Bay Regatta.
IRC is a fully international rating system that is used by many thousands of boats worldwide. The Bay Regatta has 2 IRC classes plus the Bareboat class racing under this system depending on entries. This ensures tight rating bands and close racing in fleets of between 10 - 15 boats. Ratings can be obtained from: http://www.irc-sea.com
The Bay Regatta Handicap for Cruisers replaces the previously used ThaiCap and NHC systems for Cruisers.
The Bay Regatta system has been designed to promote a single allocated handicap for Cruisers in the regatta, giving regattas a uniform scheme that can be easily adopted for racing.
The Bay Regatta Handicap system is based on known concepts used internationally in many other countries to analyse and adjust handicap numbers. The system is also designed to promote participation in the sport and works alongside IRC.
Boats without official ratings will be allocated a trial rating by the Race Committee using the best information available at time of entry.
The “trial” rating will be issued using “owner provided” data such as sail area, hull length, beam, weight etc. which will be checked against known data. Boats not providing sufficient boat data will be allocated a handicap based on standard hull data and/or a known sistership.
A trial rating may be realigned during the regatta should additional performance information become available to provide more competitive racing. handicaps individual boats as no two cruisers are the same through elements such as sail size and configuration, number of crew, weight of the boat, equipment on board, engine type, number of berths, etc.
At The Bay Regatta, we offer cruisers that do not normally race the chance to take part in the regatta using an allocated handicap system. This is especially aimed at cruising boats taking part in the regatta for the first time. If you do not already have an official rating and wish to enter this class then please contact us. Click Here to request Handicap.
