Claims against Sailing Clubs

 I would expect the club to have insurance, the insurance company will probably defend this.

I see a big difference between a helm opting to sail into shallow water, and a race committee setting key parts of the course in water that is too shallow.

Event organisers are charging for a service, I suspect they have some responsibility to provide that service in a safe and proper manner. If you invite a daggerboard class to race, you ought to have some awareness of what is required. The committe boat migh be expected to have charts, depth sounder and local knowledge, the competitors not.

Many insurance companies do not cover boats when they are chartered for a fee.
Mine does not, I think it covers third party risks though? I'm going to check that, although I never charter for money.

Unfortunately many of us sail in areas where daggerboards and fixed rudders are a very bad idea at fast dinghy speeds, let alone catamaran speeds.

Originally posted by 2547 Well it's pretty easy to guess which event/club it is ... not many fleets of cats with daggers with those numbers.

I'm playing sleuth- those of numbers are likely to be a Nationals. in 2012, the only cat classes to get over 20 entries were:

Sprint 15  82 (skeg)
Dart 18  51 (skeg)
Sprint 15 Sport  29 (skeg)
Hurricane 5.9 SX 28 (swing up centreboards)
Formula 18 25 (daggerboards)

Looking at the F18 nationals report, no boat's score line fits

Perhaps certain facts have been changed to obscure the event?

IMHO this claim has not got a hope in Hell of sticking. The lawyers will, however, try and bully the club into settling out of court, pointing out that the cost of the claim is hundreds(?) of pounds and the cost of losing in court tens of thousands. Depending on the constitution of the club it may be necessary to sue a member of the RC as a club does not necessarily have a legal persona of its own . There are a number of RYA documents on health and safety and child protection which state that no UK yacht club has ever been sued for death or injury but I guess damage must be quite common. Presumably a chart exists of this stretch of water? Surely it could be argued that common seamanship requires a knowledge of the depth and if the dagger boards will retract, they should be retracted accordingly? Having said that, if deeper water was available, it seems that it was not a great piece of race organisation to set the course in the shallows. Certainly it should have been mentioned at the briefing. At my club handicaps used to be adjusted if boats had to retract their boards!

it is difficult to insure a boat that is being chartered.  I've chartered mine out in the past and had to pay an extra fee to my insurer, which I then charged to the person chartering.  On the advice of my insurers - the lovely Noble Marine - I was also careful to take the excess as a deposit from the person chartering.  Sounds like none of this was done.

If you remove the chartering complications, how many of us would claim against a club where we had damaged our boat by running aground?  Not me, unless it was clearly gross negligence on the part of the race committee.  It's much more likely I would slink away in shame at my foolishness.

immediate gut reaction - running aground is helm error not the club's.  HOWEVER - depending on the arrangement of the line if the line didn't have any depth for part of it then that sounds to me like it was a situation the club (RC) could and maybe shouldhave foreseen...

...did he protest?