Rules Observance

In starting this thread, I did NOT want to spark a nationwide protesting mania, or any sort of rules observance crusade.

The rules do not oblige anybody to protest a boat.  Ever.  All the entitlements to protest in rule 60 are couched in terms of what a boat or a committee MAY do, not ‘shall’ or ‘must’ do.

A boat that thinks another boat broke a rule and should be penalised should protest promptly and should not rely on anybody else (such as other boats or race officials) to do it for them.

Good reasons why a boat might protest another boat include:

1. To gain or porotect her own position in a race or pointscore that is important to her;
2. With respect to another that she thinks is a serious or serial rule-breaker, to ‘teach that boat a lesson’;  or
3.  She wants to demonstrate that she is not a ‘pushover’ to her competitors.

Good reasons why a boat may refrain from protesting (either by not hailing ‘protest’ at the first reasonable opportunity, or, having done that, by not following through and delivering a a written protest) include:

1. The outcome of the protest may disadvantage her in a pointscore, for example, by 'moving up' a third competitor, who finished behind the protestee.
2. The outcome of the protest will gain her  no significant advantage;
3. On balance, she has better things to do with her time (whether those things may be preparation for further races, or merely socialising:  that’s up to her):  or even
4. She wishes to avoid the risk that the protest hearing may conclude that she, herself, broke a rule and decide to penalise her.

Nobody much likes a busybody, and unless it makes a difference to your own results or is a problem that worries you, it often makes a deal of ‘social sense’ not to protest.

That said, I would remind everyone that while it is always possible to hold back on a written protest, if you have failed to hail ‘protest’ and, if necessary display your red flag promptly, you have forfeited your opportunity to have your protest heard if you DO want to go ahead with it.  I happen to think that just the hail of ‘protest’ is an effective cue to a rule-breaking boat, and will often result in them taking applicable penalty turns when they otherwise might not.

What this thread was meant to be about was , once you HAVE decided that there is a rules observance problem with, hopefully’ a small group of sailors that does bother you, how best to go about tackling it.