  We describe a class of combinatorial design problems which typically occur in
professional sailing league competitions. We discuss connections to resolvable
block designs and equitable coverings and to scheduling problems in operations
research. We in particular give suitable boolean quadratic and integer linear
optimization problem formulations, as well as further heuristics and
restrictions, that can be used to solve sailing league problems in practice. We
apply those techniques to three case studies obtained from real sailing leagues
and compare the results with previously used tournament plans.
