Simple Racing Rules

Originally posted by Dan LXIX 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.

Originally posted by Brass We have been talking about 'Beginners Rules' subsets...

All seems sensible to me, and I agree that what I prefer to call beginners guidelines [to the rules] should be used in conjunction with advisory hearings. I really think we should talk about guidelines rather than rules because that emphasises that there is just one set of rules in use.

Brass,

First of all I've always found your responses extremely helpful on rules and I certainly learn something whenever you comment. Some observations though:

- The vagaries of language means there is always scope for interpretation and some your past posts have only illustrated this. I distinctly remember some posts from you where you identified an interpretation of the rules that had never occurred to me on reading the rules. I accepted what you said as correct as I think your knowledge goes beyond what is actually written down. This alludes to your point around the need to find other ways of communicating, but I would add that this is not just for beginners, but for all of us. I firmly believe that you will never find the use of language alone can provide an explanation that leaves no room for interpretation. This is one of the reasons that the law profession prospers as they are always considering interpretations of a law that a judge then creates case law from. Interpretation becomes particularly difficult when the definitive rules have many subjective elements such as "room to manoeuvre".

- To support the above, I found the cases are almost more important that the rules themselves and without the cases I would be lost as to which specific interpretation (or combination of) the rules needs to be made. Hence the analogy with case law.

- Although you dismiss the spirit of rules as irrelevant, I do think think they play an important role, which is why many people feel quite attached to the Paul Elvstrom quote "you haven't won if you lost the respect of your competitors" (or whatever the exact words were). I can think of a recent example where in a handicap race, a Fireball in an earlier start hung around to a sail a Phantom into penalties. The faster Fireball was strictly playing by the rules, but the rules had not been worded to account for such an eventuality. The spirit of rules is important in helping to resolve those situations where people push the boundaries.

- The spirit of the rules is what lies behind Gordon's point that "I know many sailors who have little formal knowledge of the rules but when they say 'you can't do that' they are inevitably right!". I feel that I sit in this category and agree with your point that I will probably know correctly 90% of the rules, simply because I have built an approximate model in my own mind to capture the spirit of the rules. I feel confident in saying that I do not remember the actual rules themselves.

I don't believe we will have a perfect set of rules, but I definitely think there is merit in considering simplification when so few of us can actually use the rules as worded.

Originally posted by rb_stretch I can think of a recent example where in a handicap race, a Fireball in an earlier start hung around to a sail a Phantom into penalties. The faster Fireball was strictly playing by the rules, but the rules had not been worded to account for such an eventuality. The spirit of rules is important in helping to resolve those situations where people push the boundaries.

Firstly, I presume that both boats were competing in some sort of cross-divisional pointscore, otherwise FB, having no sporting reason to interfere with P would clearly break rule 2, and possibly rule 69 (Case 78, Circumstance ( e )).

I can't see the slightest difficulty with this.

• FB plainly interfered with P.
• Boats being in different divisions with different starts, I have no difficulty concluding they were sailing on different legs.
• I find it inconceivable that at some point FB, a significantly faster boat, in the process of maintaining control of P, did not sail other than her proper course.

FB [at some time] not sailing her proper course interfered with P a boat sailing on another leg.  FB broke rule 24.2.

Having broken a rule to interfere with another boat FB broke rule 2 and possibly rule 69 (Case 78 Answer 3).

I like the difference you have there between "spirit of the rules" and "principles of sportsmanship and fair play". I suspect we mostly mean the latter when we say the former.