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kneewrecker View Drop Down
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Posts: 1586 		Post Options Post Options   Quote kneewrecker Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Simple Racing Rules
    Posted: 21 Aug 14 at 4:03pm
Originally posted by Jack Sparrow

Rules.

Someone shouts GO!

You race around a course for a distance that's been agreed before hand.

No boat hits another boat or they are DSQ.

First one over the line is the winner.

That's got my vote.

Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap

can I just edit 'no boat hits another' to 'no boat hits another and causes significant damage'... a bit of gentle 'nudging' is going to be hard to avoid.  Embarrassed
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AlexM View Drop Down
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Posts: 857 		Post Options Post Options   Quote AlexM Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Aug 14 at 4:10pm
Days of Thunder quote coming up....
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Posts: 478 		Post Options Post Options   Quote iiitick Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Aug 14 at 6:26pm
You know what raddle is? Paint stuff you smear on a rams chest so that when he serves a ewe it rubs off onto her and you can see that he has performed. Do that with boats then you could see who hit who. Why? cos' rams, like sailors are notorious liars.
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sargesail View Drop Down
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Posts: 1459 		Post Options Post Options   Quote sargesail Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Aug 14 at 8:39pm
Well this is another thread that neatly illustrates that if you change the rules you change the game.....

Thanks but no thanks!

All I could think of when reading KW's OP and a few others was Bolt's 'A Man for all Seasons', it goes something like '....and when you have torn down all the laws of England to get at the Devil Master Richard Rich, and the Devil turns round to get at you, how will you defend yourself then?'

But I absolutely agree that there is merit in making the terms and concepts more digestible for the newbie (or Rules latecomer).  As an aside I am always staggered by those that want to play....but can't be bothered to learn the rules.  You can't see that in many (any?) other sports.
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Brass View Drop Down
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Posts: 1151 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Brass Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Aug 14 at 11:28pm
Originally posted by sargesail

I am always staggered by those that want to play....but can't be bothered to learn the rules.  You can't see that in many (any?) other sports.

Any rugby tight five?

Any rugby winger?
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Posts: 1459 		Post Options Post Options   Quote sargesail Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Aug 14 at 11:49pm
Originally posted by Brass

Originally posted by sargesail

I am always staggered by those that want to play....but can't be bothered to learn the rules.  You can't see that in many (any?) other sports.

Any rugby tight five?

Any rugby winger?

Funny you should mention those examples.....I was awaiting the rejoinder from KW et al, that you grow, for example, with soccer.  And that ignoring the offside rule in the playground at age 7 is OK, but not if you play with a club, even at that gae.  And then as you get older, better, more into it you have to understand it in full.  And I think what some here are looking for is something to bridge that gap so that a similar transition can be made.  And in some part I agree with that.

But then I thought about rugby.....for the tight five there are important considerations in the laws (not rules in rugby) about how they do their business at scrum time and at the line-out.  Those rules are shield, and sometimes sword.  And I would put it to you that the tight 5 know those rules, but if the referee does not ref them (or interprets them differently) then they will ignore them.  In many ways the same for the winger wrt high tackles, jumping in to the tackle et al.  And I would then go back and say that these important rules from a collision, contact (dare one say Part 2 'Where players meet'?) have strong parallels with the RRS.  And thus back to my origina point about not being bothered to learn them.
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Dan LXIX View Drop Down
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Posts: 14 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Dan LXIX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Aug 14 at 9:50am
I'm a tight 5 player (2nd row) and I know the laws. That allows me to push them to the point the ref says no - and I've spent a lot of my defensive life slightly offside :) I also know lots of players who know few of the laws and manage just fine, albeit with a bemused look at the ref when they've been pinged for an offense occasionally.

Not sure it's so easy to compare a sport that has an arbiter of the rules/laws in the game, compared to sailing though.
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Posts: 90 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Punky Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Aug 14 at 10:03am
Do you honestly think Wayne Rooney has sat down and read the rules of football?  Or Freddie Flintoff the rules of cricket?  I doubt it.  They know the rules that affect them, because they have been taught them, and because there is an official on the spot to enforce and inform. 

As sailing is to a great extend an uncoached sport (at club level) there are no pearls of wisdom to be passed from master to apprentice and there is no umpire on hand to appeal to or enforce the rules.  One of the great appeals of sailing is the freedom it brings.  Nine bullet points I can cope with, but a rules book?  Honestly?  I understand one is needed, but don't expact the average participant to read it!
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Brass View Drop Down
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Posts: 1151 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Brass Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Aug 14 at 8:59am
I thought it might be a good idea to summarise this thread.

After having just about run ourselves to a standstill on the Protests and First Reasonable Opportunity thread, this thread has focused on 'Simplified Rules'.

The following propositions appear to have emerged:
  1. The complexity of the rules leads to incidents on the water which can only be resolved by the protest procedure, which, itself, is complex, and to some, distasteful.
  2. Potential competitors are deterred from playing and enjoying the game because it is difficult for them to understand and comply with the rules (play by the rules) because the rules are complex.
In passing, it is observable that the protest hearing procedures forces competitors to focus on the precise wording of the rules to an extent not found in other sports.

While it might be possible to devise a game, such as the ISAF Introductory Rules where the rules could be used only as a 'shield' and not a 'sword', so that no competitor could take competitive advantage of the rules (think of a beginner snooker player who only considers potting balls, and never considers going for a snooker), we seem to have agreed that the rules are suitable for experienced competitors, and that it is probably not appropriate, generally, to construct a 'new game' just for beginners.

So, we have been considering selecting a 'subset' of the rules, expressed simply, to help, or to 'tide-over' beginners, while they [gradually] learn the real rules.

There have been numerous proposals for 'dot-point' rules, and I have, as forcibly as I can suggested that it may be a better way to help beginners to assimilate and understand the rules, to use memorable thumbnail graphical presentations.

If we are agreed that we don't need to simplify the main body of the rules, but rather we need to provide a simpler way of helping beginners to learn enough to 'play by the rules' and enjoy racing, while not engaging in the elite level cut and thrust, then, perhaps we need to consider some other factors.

In my experience, the vast majority of incidents coming up in protests are the result of one or more of the following:
  1. misjudgements of time and space;
  2. poor boat handling (or boat handling not as good as the judgement of time and space expected <g>);  and
  3. inability to apply the rules [quickly enough]
When parties to a protest indicate that they misunderstood or were confused by the rules, this usually sounds like a post hoc excuse, and when you examine the incident carefully, it's not really lack of rules knowledge at all.

So, maybe what we need to be trying to do is to develop a series of aids or one sort or another to help beginners to learn to apply the rules.

Learning [internalising] the concepts contained in a fairly limited subset of rules is an obvious first step, but, as I have indicated, I think that this would probably be done most effectively using non-textual means:  nobody should need to learn rules and definitions by heart (until they want to become a judge <g>).

We had a fairly extensive discussion of these ideas on Sailing Anarchy some time ago.

You may wish to take a look at that here
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Brass View Drop Down
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Posts: 1151 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Brass Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Aug 14 at 9:16am
Originally posted by rb_stretch

I reckon I might know at best 50% of the (on the water) rules properly and even with concerted effort I don't think I would get to anywhere near a proper understanding. In terms of club sailing I would class that as much better than average, so does suggest something isn't working. 

I disagree.

If you had said that you came out of boat on boat incidents not knowing who was in the right 50% of the time, then I would agree that there was a problem.

But I'll bet that you come out of boat on boat incidents more than 90% of the time knowing exactly who was in the right and who was in the wrong, and, if you could be bothered, you could correctly identify the applicable rules in the rule book.

Even if, say, there was a match racer in your fleet, with an intimate knowledge of rules and boat on boat tactics that could drive you all over the race course, causing you to break rules and so on, that is very unlikely to happen, because it would spoil his 'game' [of fleet racing] as much as yours

Having developed rules in business life, I do know that there is a balance to be struck in how tight/precise to make the rules vs how widely applied they will be. Based on experience I have generally erred towards making things more applicable rather than more precise and just accept that some situations won't be covered and then rely on the spirit of the rules to make an exceptional interpretation.

That may be OK for writing rules in a business, where, to a degree you are starting from scratch, and 1) the 'spirit of the rules' is to make money for the company or to save money for the company;  and 2)  if 1 does not resolve any ambiguity, what the boss says goes.

The RRS are different.  They have had the best part of 100 years of development so that they describe the game with a highly reliable level of precision.  Where necessary, authoritative interpretations are provided in the Cases (this allows the rules to be kept short, and to a degree, to not expressly deal with unusual but complicated situations).

This 'spirit of the rules' thing is, in my opinion, anathema to a modern competitive sport.  It's dangerously subjective, and is usually only 'needed' to patch over a poorly conceived or drafted rule, which I contend the RRS are neither.
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