MI You make an excellent point. I tried to do this years ago in trying to understand what the hell my club was buying.

What you get back from this inquiry is of questionable value OR simply too expensive to implement.

When you ask lawyers... you get the answer... its about case law and this is not clear.... what state are you talking about?
Useless for this purpose!

When you ask the insurance company underwriter, their advice is to do nothing to undercut individual responsibility of the skipper. They point to the Chi mac race for guidance and principals. Chi Mac controls entry to the race... Oh, and ... you should purchase on the beach coverage for your liquor and docking liability which are bigger issues then sailboat racing.

When you ask... how many RC's have been involved in cases... the answers get muddy because settlements tend to be hidden.

PU has an excellent "how to run a regatta" manual. He makes specific statements about numbers of mark boats, safety/chase boats, gear equipment etc. If we adopted these as standards... events would be impossible to run for many clubs or a lot more expensive. So... we in fact DO stick our heads in the sand and ignore PU's guidelines. Of course we wish we had the resources to follow his guidelines.

One thing I point out though is that PU has a huge amount of international experience and these guidelines that he puts out there are actually mandated by many of the overseas sailing federations and they have very different legal regulations. His guidelines are a real gold standard.

The Annapolis area suffered a tragic death of a young sailor in a 420. A full on US Sailing inquiry followed. Best practices were noted. The club did a good job all the way through. The insurance companies required an in water 2 hour safety program for all of the 420 sailors. Essentially, the insurance companies are telling us what to do here with juniors.

Bottom line... trying to get some firm policy from somebody you think has knowledge is tough. The insurance agents try to manage this issue by creating liability policies that give you broad coverage and a lawyer. Details are tough to come by... When you mix adults and juniors... see pandora and don't touch her box again.

So... In principal fantastic... but my experience was frustrating.

Here is what I point people to for a start.
http://crac.sailregattas.com/_/crac/ui/Index.aspx?tabid=332

Its a exposition by the agent/underwriter for one of the regatta liability companies. He is now dealing with one of the lawsuits from the west coast tragedies.