more rules help

So we start off with both boats on port, and Y clear ahead and to windward of B. So Y has ROW.
Y changes course and gybes onto Starboard. She retains ROW, but must give B room to keep clear.
B gybes on to starboard and is now windward overlapped. They enter the Zone, B is now entitled to mark room.
For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me B then hits the mark.
With Y having ROW right through, it seems to be it all hinges on whether B was given the room she was entitled.
So we start with the definition:

Room The space a boat needs in the existing conditions, including space to comply with her obligations under the rules of Part 2 and rule 31, while manoeuvring promptly in a seamanlike way.

As soon as I saw the words crash gybe I started wondering whether room was given, and similarly "can't avoid hitting".


Edited by JimC - 23 May 21 at 7:22pm

As far as I can see, after Y gybed, B gybed, in a seamanlike way and there was no contact.  I think Y is clean for rules 15/16 in the gybe.

OK, yes, there are two separate incidents, the gybe incident, outside the zone, so mark-room not involved, then the incident at the mark.

Wouldn't yellow just say - yes, there was room to gybe, blue gybed? And then say yes, there was room at the mark, it's not my problem that blue can't steer properly?
Without witnesses, it simply becomes opinions on space, and yellow is always going to say there was plenty, and blue that there wasn't. The protest then just becomes about who is believed. Or is that just a cynical view?

I'm still puzzled by why B felt it necessary to "stuff it into the mark to avoid a big collision" The two boats were alongside each other travelling in the same direction at much the same speed. Even if Blue's drop went badly wrong wouldn't the worst have been a bit of bumping and both boats ending up several boat lengths past the mark before rounding up?

Protests are almost always about what the PC reckons really happened. The PC is under no obligation to believe either story, and its probably not unusual for the actual events to have been somewhere in between.

I think RYA Case 2004/8 is somewhat relevant.

RYA 2004/8 Definitions, Mark-Room Rule 18.2(b), Mark-Room: Giving Mark-Room Rule 18.4. Mark-Room: Gybing The room an outside overlapped boat must give at a mark to an inside right-of-way boat includes room to gybe when that is part of the inside boat’s proper course to round the mark. In determining the right of an inside boat to mark-room under rule 18.2(b), it is irrelevant that boats are on widely differing courses, provided that an overlap exists when the first of them enters the zone. SUMMARY OF THE FACTS In force 3-4 conditions, following a wind shift, S was approaching a leeward mark, which she was required to round to port, broad-reaching on starboard tack in order to gybe onto a reciprocal close-hauled course. P, on another leg of the course, was approaching the same mark, also to round it, from nearly the opposite direction, on port tack. S hailed for room to round the mark and this hail was acknowledged. S judged that she was not being given sufficient room to gybe in safety, and passed astern of P before gybing. Her protest, under rules 10 and 18, and which alleged contact (but not damage), was dismissed on the grounds that contact was not proven, that room was given for her gybe, and for S to decide not to gybe was prudence that should not result in the penalisation of P. S appealed. DECISION S’s appeal is upheld. P is disqualified. S and P were on opposite tacks, but rule 18 applied, since both boats were not on a beat to windward (see rule 18.1(a)), nor was the proper course of one of them to tack at the mark (see rule 18.1(b)). It was not relevant that they were approaching the mark on widely differing courses – see WS Case 12. When the first of them entered the mark’s zone they were overlapped, and P was required by rule 18.2(b) to give S room to round the mark. It is clear that S’s proper course was to gybe at the mark as required by rule 18.4, and that she intended to do so. The protest committee’s conclusion that sufficient room was given for a gybe is contradicted by its conclusion that, in the circumstances, it was prudent for S not to attempt to gybe in the room given. That is tantamount to saying that S was not given sufficient space in the prevailing conditions. Rather than gybing, S luffed, and contact was likely had she not done so. P therefore broke both rule 10 and rule 18.2(b).

As its unarguable that B needed to take down her kite, then it seems reasonable to me that room needed to be provided to do it in the same way the case states that room to gybe needed to be provided.