Teams racing I believe is the most intense and exhilarating form
of sailing. It usually involves two teams of three identical boats.
The more identical and evenly matched the six boats are the better.
The focus on team racing is on tactics as the races are usually short
minimising the physical aspect of the sailing. Also no matter how good
your boat speed is, it is impossible to sail fast when someone is
dumping dirty air on you, often by letting their jib flap. Having said
this boat speed and physical condition are often all that separate the
top teams so do not necessarily neglect them!

• Communication between team members.
• Sacrificing your own speed temporarily to benefit a teammates position.
• Avoiding covering or slowing down your teammates.
• Avoiding fouling opponents while trying to get them to foul you.


Scoring

As the below points table shows it is possible for a team to win a race
without a team member actually coming first. Ten points or less wins a
race with each place counting for one point. A simple rule of thumb is
that 1,2 anything and 1,3 anything wins (so long as the last boat actually
finishes). Naturally teams often try to establish a 1,2 breakaway with the
third boat acting to slow down the opposition.


Winning Combinations	Losing Combinations
1,2,3 1,2,4 1,2,5 1,2,6 1,3,4 1,3,5 1,3,6 1,4,5 2,3,4 2,3,5	4,5,6 3,5,6 3,4,6 3,4,5 2,5,6 2,4,6 2,4,5 2,3,6 1,5,6 1,4,6

Stable Vs Unstable Combinations

A stable combination is when each team member is in control of a
boat from the other team. An example combination is 1,3,5. Boat
one is controlling (usually by covering them upwind) boat two from
the other team, boat three is controlling boat four from the other
team and boat five is controlling boat six from the other team.
As each boat is in effect dominating one boat from the opposition
their is to tendency for places to change unless a boat makes a
mistake and does not cover an opposition boat for example.
Their are many other stable combinations like 1,2,3 and 1,2,5.

An unstable combination is when the leading team can not cover all
the opposition boats. The combination of 1,3,6 is unstable for this
reason as while boat one is covering boat two from the opposition
boat three has to cover two opposition boats. Not the easiest thing
to do! The common sense thing for the losing team to do in this case
is for boat four to drag boat three into a tacking duel or out to the
unfavoured side of the course while boat five goes all out for speed
and does as few tacks as possible. Boat two may also choose to cover
boat three to give boat five a better chance to pass. As you can see
the number of options for the losing team increases markedly when it
is in an unstable combination increases, hence why it is 'unstable'.