Protests and the first reasonable opportunity

the rules are simple and do state that. I think the ISAF should issue some clarification on this though especially for club racing where it is more friendly to advise someone of an infringment and request they do turns before issuing the word protest.

Seems a little pedantic, as long as they said "Protest" and it was heard by the other boat it shouldn't matter what else is said around it (unless abusive language etc in which case Rule 69 kicks in).

You could carry on the logic along the lines of well they said "tack quick" to their crew before shouting protest.  I heard this so the first thing they said wasn't protest... Equally in a high wind involving a capsize on behalf of the aggrieved party the first opportuninty could be on the hard after the race, do the crew have to remain silent until they see the other boat and say Protest?

Edited by fish n ships - 11 Aug 14 at 2:43pm

The rules are really bad in this respect and I think they desperately need changing. However there's a considerable body of opinion that's very antagonistic to any relaxation of this rule, but all logic says to me that this interpretation discourages rule observance and is in clear contradiction to the preamble to the rules.

The logic the PTB use is that if you aren't informed that the other party considers a rule to be broken you can't take an alternative penalty, and that there will be too many made up protests where the other person isn't informed until after the race.

To my mind this is a really poor argument. If the rules were broken the rules were broken and the guilty party should be penalised, but if the guilty party wasn't given the opportunity to take an alternative penalty then they should get say a 20% place penalty, not a DSQ. As for made up protests, that's what RRS2, RRS69 are for.

Edited by JimC - 11 Aug 14 at 3:44pm

Originally posted by JimC The rules are really bad in this respect and I think they desperately need changing. The logic the PTB use is that if you aren't informed that the other party considers a rule to be broken you can't take an alternative penalty, and that there will be too many made up protests where the other person isn't informed until after the race. To my mind this is a really poor argument. If the rules were broken the rules were broken and the guilty party should be penalised, but if the guilty party wasn't given the opportunity to take an alternative penalty then they should get say a 20% place penalty, not a DSQ. As for made up protests, that's what RRS2, RRS69 are for.

If I ever had a protest thrown out for that i would request it be re-opened as the protest committee have clearly erred in the duty.