PFD

. Navigating the sea of regulations can feel harder than a beat into 30 knots of breeze. We hear questions about Canadian law versus the Offshore Special Regulations (OSR) all the time. This post breaks down some of what you need to carry, what your youth crew should wear, and how to bridge the gap between "legal" and "safe." This post is a walk through some, hopefully logical reasoning. I must give credit to someone else who helped to convince us of this logic by pointing o

Sail Canada just released their prescriptions to the 2026–2027 Offshore Special Regulations (effective January 1, 2026). The following is a summary highlighting the prescription that Sail Canada has made to the Category 3 Monohull OSRs. For BC sailors, recent work by the BC Sailing OSR committee has brought local harmonisation to the major events reducing the number of event specific amendments. This means less work to get ready for your Long Distance Campaign in BC.

Introduction With the introduction of the 2026-27 OSRs from World Sailing, we have been going through them looking for changes and trying to wrap our heads around what they mean. Below is a bit of a deep dive into what is said about Lifejackets, or PFDs and the systems that surround this vital piece of equipment. Namely, we will mention tethers and harnesses. Sail Canada has at present not updated its website with their prescriptions. We are eagerly awaiting that document,