Newport Bermuda Race organizers complete review of scoring errors

The Bermuda Race Organizing Committee (BROC) and US Sailing have concluded an investigation into scoring errors that occurred during the 2026 Newport Bermuda Race. The errors involved the Forecast Time Correction Factors (F-TCFs), which are used to determine optimal finish times based on weather forecasts.

The investigation identified two primary causes for the discrepancy. The dominant cause was a human process failure on the morning of June 19, where conflicting GRIB weather files remained active in the routing software alongside official data, resulting in corrupted and randomized elapsed-time calculations. A secondary, smaller cause was a software defect where the routing software produced different results when processing the fleet in batch mode versus individual mode.

Following the discovery of the error by a competitor on June 23, corrected F-TCFs were delivered to officials on June 24. After redress hearings, the International Jury directed the publication of results on June 26 using the corrected data. The software developer has since corrected the identified defect.