The new Laser b**tard

That's awful Bootscooter...    I know that would be enough to put some kids (and parents) off. 

Whilst there are clearly good and bad ways to enforce rules our sport is governed by them, if you have a nervous 11 year old why send them to a championships with an illegal boat? Why put your child in that position, you know there are class rules so read them and avoid this situation in the first place.

Originally posted by L123456 Whilst there are clearly good and bad ways to enforce rules our sport is governed by them, if you have a nervous 11 year old why send them to a championships with an illegal boat? Why put your child in that position, you know there are class rules so read them and avoid this situation in the first place. As for tallies if you have ever been in the situation that you can't stand down tired and cold rescue crews because there are still tallies unaccounted for you soon take a different view, when it comes to safety everyone needs to learn their responsibilities.  People need to be responsible for themselves and their own actions then long suffering officials will never be forced into action and these situations will never occur.

You've missed my point. I have no issue at all with the tally system, what I have an issue with is where it is treated as a mechanism to penalise sailors (youth or adult, doesn't matter) and not the safety system it is intended to be. Surely the primary aim is to ensure the tally's are collected quickly and efficiently as the boats come ashore? The shore team then know everyone is back and hence results can be finalised and safety stood down.

I'll repeat my final point of earlier - in my experience this is an isolated incident and the majority of clubs operate the system very well.

I also think you have missed Bootscooter's point but I'll let him respond to that.

Douglas is absolutely right. My issue is not with rules, but the "style" in which they're implemented/enforced.
In my post I have highlighted the difference between the way 2 individuals did the same job, the second person understood that brand new (junior) sailors don't necessarily know the rules yet, and their parent may well be non-sailors and don't know their goosenecks from a double-ended gungy-flange. Education is the key.

I also saw a laser measurer at a local 4.7 event demanding the boats be DE-rigged so that he could measure the gaps between the sail numbers. At that same event he found that one of the new sailors to the class had a boat that had been bought for him by his non-sailing parents that have a number of replica parts on it. Thankfully it didn't come up as an issue (some careful manoeuvreing on my part) but I was fully prepared to go in to battle to ensure the kid could sail on that day, with education about class regs.

At the previously mentioned nationals again, one of my kids was in tears because the measurer said she couldn't sail because her boat had a replica XD double jammer fitted. If the Hitleresque fella had done his job properly he'd have seen that it was a genuine part with a Rooster sticker on it (there when we bought it).

All in all it's amazing that some of these kids continue with the negative attitudes shown to them in some situations.

Kids do this stuff to please you as parents, so if you inflict the RYA and the inevitable failures they employ as coaches with their own jealousies still in place, and all manner of other jobsworths, you only have yourselves to blame.

These types should be reported at every instance, but we don't, I didn't, I very much regret not doing it even now, my nephew is going through absolute hell at the hands of some frigging nobody at the RYA and it makes you want to spit venom.

The RYA is a good and decent body, it is so so important that it stays in place in the stead of what would replace it from Whitehall, but there are individuals that do it no good whatsoever.

Courtesy costs absolutely nothing and if they simply applied the rules in the manner that they might like them applied to themselves then the rules wouldn't be anything half as draconian as they appear to be to young folk and their parents.

I hate jobsworths.