Under 18's declarations for Club racing

Folks, wonder if you can advise here.

We have parent declarations for Junior sailing activities. Covers usual stuff, acceptance of risks, photography, good behaviour etc.

In the past year our Club came up with a "Dinghy entry form" that every member is supposed to sign and return before taking part in any races. We've added even more paperwork for the Junior sailors and have recently had to head off some over-zealous officers who were looking to give race officers the ability to ban under-14's from Club races if they wanted to.

We've never had a serious incident involving Junior sailors in Club races but we're fighting an internal battle with a group of officers who seem to think our Juniors are in imminent danger of a safety incident or the Club being held liable.

Does your club make any special provision for junior members taking part in Club races and are there any specific requirements or restrictions in place?

We sail in a pretty shallow, sheltered harbour by the way. So I'd say our risks are low.

It looks like you are looking for advice about proportionate responses to some perceived safety and social behaviour issues.

For that you have come to the wrong place, this is the Racing Rules forum.  For advice about safety management and social control, I suggest you look to the RYA, perhaps starting with this page https://www.rya.org.uk/knowledge-advice/safety-mangement/Pages/hub.aspx and including discussions with you local RYA reps.

FWIW, my experience is that extravagant, excessively risk averse responses are usually promoted by people who haven't done a proper risk analysis, but are just scare-mongering.  Do your risk assessment and safety planning as the RYA recommend and this should come up with the right answers.

The 'rules' answer to your questions are.

Firstly, the Racing Rules of Sailing have gone to a lot of trouble to protect Organising Authorities and Race Officials from liability by means of rule 4

Your club is quite right to recognise that this is not absolute and that juniors may be legally incapable of taking this responsibility and parents need to be involved.

Race Officials have no authority under the Racing Rules of Sailing to prevent a boat (and its crew) from competing in an event for which it's entry has been accepted.

Rule 76.1 provides that a boat's entry may be rejected or cancelled, or a competitor may be excluded, but only if this is done before the first race of a series.

After a boat's entry has been accepted and the first race, the only way a competitor, boat owner or support person may be excluded from an event is by a decision of a protest committee following a formal hearing under rule 69 Misconduct.

An OOD can't cherry-pick among competitors and choose who to ban and who to allow to race.

Just for starters, as Noah has said, what confidence would you have that a rostered OOD would be competent to assess the competence and capability of any competitor?  It's certainly not within the competencies required of a Race Officer.

If there was genuine concern about levels of competence, (which is probably more appropriate to higher risk environments, like open sea dinghy racing) then I might suggest that you could institute graded fleets or divisions, like Opti Gold, Silver and Green Fleets, then the RO could abandon racing for selected divisions in adverse conditions.

Thank you, Brass. A very considered and comprehensive reply. I decided to post the question here because, like you, I was sure the Club was encroaching into a minefield with RRS 4 & 76 in particular. Given that it's not unusual for under 18's to require a parental declaration of some sort before taking part in events, I wondered what other clubs were doing. Agree with your view that splitting fleets into Gold / Silver etc gives the R.O flexibility to cancel racing for less experienced sailors without having to make a judgement call that could look like discrimination.

Until recently we just scribbled our boat names and sail numbers on a sheet of paper and went sailing. Seems like the good old days are well and truly over!