Top dog

Graeme - no it's not the same guy who retired from the sailjuice series, but like all things in dinghy sailing, it's only a stone's throw to a spurious connection...

Speed made the 'illegal' sails

I'm sure there's a trollable angle there somewhere for you.

What I think's depressing is that a guy wins an event well within the rules, and you get this sort of moral claptrap claiming the spirit of them is broken. blah blah blah.

On the flipside, a couple of guys win the sailjuice but break the rules and are effectively forced to retire, but then it's claimed, they did not break the 'spirit of the rules' and they also come in to a load of flack...

f*ck me, dinghy racing is a rather peculiar little oddity when you take a break from it for a while and can look back with some perspective. No wonder it's in decline and seems so impenetrable for newbies and onlookers.

Edited by rogue - 05 Sep 11 at 1:49pm

Originally posted by G.R.F. Wasn't he one of the two lads earlier this year that got flung out for discrepancies with the sails they were using on a Merlin

I think you'll find he wasn't one of them, and in any case the guys in question weren't flung out, they elected to retire.

Originally posted by Andymac I don't know whether the PC had any other option at the time, other than to offer option (a)

Yeah agreed... Maybe average points should exclude the last race so this sort of situation can't occur again. Whilst Mr Davis' action was certainly within the letter of the law I think its very hard to make a case for it being a desirable outcome. Effectively Mr Carveth lost because of a Race Committee error.

Edited by JimC - 05 Sep 11 at 1:01pm

Originally posted by JimC Dunno, I must say it makes me uneasy... I have no problem with one boat sailing another boat down the fleet to give them a bad result - at least in a class race. If, say, a 49er sailed a Solo to the back of the fleet I'm not sure I'd be so comfortable about that. I am really not so sure about sailing a boat down the fleet to give them *two* bad results. What it means is that the redress suddely stops being effective and I'm not sure that's right. If we look at the RRS in A10 we have A10 GUIDANCE ON REDRESS If the protest committee decides to give redress by adjusting a boat’s score for a race, it is advised to consider scoring her (a) points equal to the average, to the nearest tenth of a point (0.05 to be rounded upward), of her points in all the races in the series except the race in question; (b) points equal to the average, to the nearest tenth of a point (0.05 to be rounded upward), of her points in all the races before the race in question; or (c) points based on the position of the boat in the race at the time of the incident that justified redress. Option a gives the result we've seen. Option b reverses the places. Normally I'd say that option a is fairer, especially early in a series, but in this case... I think its hard to say that the eventual effect of the redress was to make as fair an arrangement as possible for all boats affected . In the event the second place boat was severely disadvantaged by the redress.

Uffa tended to describe himself as a cruising man rather than a racing man, although with his tongue in his cheek I suspect. I think he won a few Canoe events as well as the 14: certainly he was half of the team that won the New York Canoe Club trophy, which is supposed to be the second oldest active international trophy after the Americas Cup. In those days not all events were open to industry pros anyway.

regards, Jim C