If a yacht does have email capabilities, the following rule from the Sailing Instructions should be known to all correspondents:

40.1 A yacht shall neither make radio transmissions while racing nor receive radio communications regarding weather or race conditions unless the broadcast is a publicly scheduled forecast available to the entire fleet.

40.2 While racing a yacht shall not use an electronic communication device either to transmit or to receive any weather information that is transmitted for the direct or indirect benefit of an individual boat as distinct from all other boats participating in the race.

Accordingly, a boat may receive regularly scheduled weather fax transmissions from stations such as NPM and NMC and may receive from orbiting satellites the maps normally broadcast by satellites. However, a boat may not receive "e-mail" containing weather information or obtain weather information from a "web page" on the Internet. Although a boat may listen to "chatter" between commercial shipping vessels, if any such vessel transmits weather information to another vessel for the purpose of indirectly conveying such information to a boat racing and the boat receives i.e. hears, the transmission of such information, then the boat shall have violated Paragraph 40.2. If a boat conducts any communication with anyone who may not be aware of Paragraph 40.2, then at the beginning of any such communication the boat should inform the other person of Paragraph 40.2 so as to avoid inadvertent violations.