Exoneration penalties, arbitration, etc

I'm curious to know if most clubs have adopted the scheme just as set out in the RYA Best Practice doc or have some made adjustments - eg. using a higher scoring penalty than the usual 20%?

Yes, that's the system as I understand it. But it does worry me that it could be abused a bit. For example, the usual penalty clubs have adopted is 20% (minimum 2 points). In a club race in windy weather someone might decide it's better for their chances to not do a 2-turns penalty but accept the scoring penalty afterwards. That way they save themselves the worry of a capsize or losing to half the fleet when doing turns. Is this fair?

If you can demonstrate that a competitor knew they had broken a rule and did not take a penalty then that is a Rule 2 infringement the penalty for which is DNE. There is aslo the possiility of taking action under rule 69.


IMHO we should be more pro-active in using rules 2 and 69
Gordon

Originally posted by Vronny Originally posted by sargesail My word - I'd take 2 turns rather than 20% any day! But if that just means a 2 point penalty as opposed to doing a 2-turn penalty which could lose you several places, especially late in a race when it might be hard to get those places back ? And the other thing is that taking a penalty doesn't affect anyone else's score. So if you were leading you get 2 extra points and so end up with 3 points. But the boat that was second still has 2 points, and the boat that was third has 3 points just like you've ended up with. So that penalty doesn't seem very punishing!

Obviously, as the fleet size gets bigger the penalty points increase - so 3 points for a fleet of 15 boats.