Monday 21 July 2008

Timing (in) the rules | 2

I've received a couple of interesting pieces and will post them in the coming weeks. (Please be patient if your piece isn't published straight away, I'll try to get to all of them).

The first is related to Timing (in) the rules, a post from friday a week ago. Paul Gingras asks a question:

Say you are sailing a leg of a course and another competitor hails "Protest" at you but you are not sure that you have fouled that other yacht. So you think about the situation as you complete that leg and begin to sail the next leg of the course. Halfway through this next leg you decide that yes, you did foul the protesting yacht, so you do your penalty turns at that time. Can you wait this long to do your turns?

Thanks, Paul Gingras.

I know most Protest committees will say that the penalty has been taken to late. On the next leg of the course is not "at the time of the incident". But I can perfectly understand someone not knowing straight away if a rule has been infringed. Hell, we need half an hour in the room to figure things out. Why is it that this two rounds penalty is not acceptable? Or, shouldn't it be?

5 comments:

  1. Why is it that this two rounds penalty is not acceptable? Or, shouldn't it be? Well, it is not acceptable because we do not need another rule with openings for arbitrary interpretations. RR 44.2 left already enough to consider and decide. By the way, in my book RR 44.2 reads “… as soon after the incident as possible …” I do not know where “at the time of the incident” comes from. I think this wording is wrong, as you cannot take a two-turns penalty at the time of the incident.
    Adriaan Pels.

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  2. A better look taught me that Paul and Jos talk at cross-purposes. Paul is talking about ‘penalty turns’ and ‘do your turns’(RR 44.2 I understood) and Jos talks about ‘the penalty has been taken’ and later, about ‘this two rounds penalty’ (RR 44.1). Jos is right in his approach as RR 44.1 comes first, but I do not agree with his comparison: Hell, we need half an hour in the room to figure things out. RR 44.1 says: A boat that may have broken a rule (…) may take a penalty …. And one do not need half an hour to figure this out, a hail of another competitor is enough to realize that you ‘may’ have broken a rule.
    Adriaan Pels

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  3. Adriaan,
    My point exactly; 44.1: "may take a penalty at the time of the incident", in contradiction with 44.2: " as soon after the incident as possible"

    What if the hail from the other boat was also half a leg after the incident? We would accept that as valid, if that was the first reasonable opportunity for both.

    Can the hailed boat then still take her two turns penalty?

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  4. In my view this are two separate cases. The question whether the hail was legal, do not influence the problem of the other boat. For this boat only RR 44.1 matters: A boat that may have broken a rule (…) may take a penalty …. When this boat needed a hail to realize she may have broken a rule and she can satisfy the PC, taking the penalty after the hail was ok. But if there was, for example, contact with another boat, it is clear that she may have broken a rule.

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  5. Yesterday the protest committee at the Highlander National Championship disqualified a competitor who infringed RRS 10 just after rounding the offset mark because he did not take his two-turns penalty until 2/3 of the way down the leeward leg. We based our decision on US SAILING Appeal 60, which reads in part: "Rule 44.1 does not provide time for a boat to deliberate whether she has broken a rule. If a boat decids too late that she has broken a rule, the penalty provided by rule 44 is not available to her."

    The boat in the appeal had sailed about 13 boat lengths and rounded a mark before taking her penalty turns.

    ReplyDelete

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