Revolutionising Competitive Sailing: RYA Unveils the Refined Portsmouth Yardstick Numbers for 2025

With a remarkable history and an underappreciated impact on the global boating community, the Portsmouth Yardstick (PY), a universal system used to compare a boat’s relative performance against the others it races with, has ushered in an era of crucial change. Unveiled annually at the RYA Dinghy and Watersports Show, the PY for 2025 signals the first transformations to its mathematical formula in a 30 year span. This innovative update brings about a revolutionary leap in the world of competitive sailing, allowing different boats, irrespective of their classes, to compete on an even, transparent playing field.

Answering the question, how does this work? The RYA publishes a national list annually, serving as a foundation for clubs to designate numbers to the boats participating in their races. For the uninitiated observer, it may seem complex. But in essence, each boat’s elapsed time around the racecourse is converted to a corrected time based on the boat’s PY number using a straightforward correction calculation.

As the competitive world evolves, so too must the mechanisms which govern it. Aligning with this perspective, the PY has undergone significant refinement in 2025. Hand in hand with Sheffield Hallam University, the RYA brought about the maiden change to the PY calculations since 1995, a measure reflecting commitment to the standards of yachting today. Adapting its analysis tool, the eligibility criteria for an individual race now requires more than three finishers, more than one class, and a minimum duration of 20 minutes.

In the spirit of evolving with time, the PY system has expanded its threshold to 110%, enabling the inclusion of a wider range of race times without compromising on quality. It has transitioned from using the mean to the median in calculations, thereby providing a more balanced and resilient platform, and reducing the impact of outliers. With the launch of the class list in 2024 and the continuous enhancements to the PY online website, data submission has been vastly simplified and accurateness enhanced. The future of competitive sailing thus gears up for more thrilling, fairer, and accessible contests.