Inside overlaps

Jim, is this really you? All your other posts are fairly reasonable, but this last bit seems to say that if you can't identify the boat that fouled, to avoid you being chucked, you'd make up a protest against the closest boat you could. Which is a pretty sh*tty thing to do.

If there aren't on-the-water umpires, sailing is supposed to be a self-policing sport with the room as a last resort.

I think I have re-understood what Jim meant. Apologies!

If there is an infringement, you call them on it. Hopefully they do their turns, if not you chat to them afterwards and hopefully they retire. If not, you take them to the room. So it is the last part of the process? Do it a couple of times and people know you're serious.

Sorry, genuine mistake at 3 in the morning!

I followed it up with another posting straight away (not very well, apparently) to try and correct my mistake. I'll have to work out how you can isolate small excerpts in a quote, then that wouldn't have happened. Any tips?

Back to the debate, seems I have stirred up something here.

Just for the record, there was no doubt whatsoever that I had an overlap on X.

If I had a hint that X was about to attempt something so outragous, I would have prewarned him. Of course my contemplation to sail into the gap, prior to boat X transgression, did not account for boat X actually being there as well.

Since I was forced to gybe into the gap by X, then surely I was compelled to break a rule, irrespective of what I was 'thinking' immediately before X  gybed in front of me, leaving me no other option. Maybe if I hadn't started off by stating I was looking to take the gap.......

How I wished I could have identified boat X!

As you can appreciate the whole incident happened in a matter of seconds...

I was more intent on avoiding any significant contact between boats. As soon as I gybed to initially avoid X, I was then on windward side of my boat, with his sail shielded by mine. I was distracted by the protestations from the leeward group of boats preventing me from identifying X. Ten seconds later as boats had tacked off the other way, I'm left looking at 3 or 4 vela grey lasers, which are impossible to tell apart.

Having had time to think about my actions, it does raise the question whether I am at all culpable. Granted if I had gybed first into the gap before X, then I would have been in a very difficult situation of proving that I would have got through in the abscence of X. However, X gybed before me (breaking a rule) and left me the only option to gybe as well. I 'may' have been able to sail to windward of the mark and left X to get through without fouling leeward boats, or persist with the gap and 'squeeze' through touching mark and scuffing gunwhales. Given that there was minor contact, which, had I sacrificed myself going wrong side of mark may have been avoided, I decided to take a penalty. If it had been significantly windier, I probably wouldn't have contemplated getting though the gap, risking serious damage to all concerned.

In all the kefuffle, all of the protestations were directed at me, I don't think anybody realised the idendity of X at the time, he managed to slip away anonymously. Shame really, he could do that all over again, no lesson learnt.

At the end of the day, I could have gained 4-5 places at the mark if it all went well, instead I probably lost 2-3 more places doing turns. I guess it was a calculated risk which didn't pay. Just a bit miffed that it wasn't all down to me....

It wasn't a war, and nobody died, at least my concience is clear.

Lasers love them or hate them, you do get close fleet racing on a big scale.