Originally posted by JimC
Windward boat keeps clear. Getting out on the wire is a perfectly normal activity and a normal position.
Case 74 makes it clear that 'normal' is irrelevant: the test is whether there was 'deliberate misuse'.
If they were able to just keep clear by pinching quite a bit you certainly did all that could be expected. I'd argue that if there is not room to get out on the wire without contacting the windward boat in gusty conditions then the windward boat is not keeping clear, although that's contestable.
I think there's a fine distinction. W is not required to give that much space unless and until L goes out on the wire: as long as L is sitting in, W can be keeping clear, but at her risk that she has to go up as quickly L can get out on the wire.
What you can't do, though, is reach out and touch the windward boat to demonstrate they're not keeping clear.
Yes you can. See RYA Appeal 1999/5 (absolute accident: I was just trawling through the WS Integrated Rules ebook, which now has WS Cases, last night, and I happened to browse through the RYA Appeals on rule 2, otherwise I would never have known about it <g>).
When a give-way boat is already breaking a rule of Section A of Part 2 by not keeping clear, deliberate contact does not necessarily break rule 2. Before the starting signal, two boats were reaching on starboard tack toward the committee vessel at the end of the starting line. L established her leeward overlap when there was room for W to keep clear. W made no attempt to keep clear. L’s crew leaned out and touched an item of W’s equipment which was in its normal position. L protested W. L’s evidence was that her crew had touched W to prove that W was too close to be described as keeping clear. The protest committee found that W had broken rule 11 and disqualified her. It also found that L had broken rule 2 by making deliberate contact with W, citing WS W’s appeal is dismissed: however, L is to be reinstated. In WS Case 73, W was keeping clear, so that L’s action in deliberately touching her could have had no other intention than to cause W to break rule 11. In the present case, the protest committee was satisfied that W was already not keeping clear, as defined, before contact occurred (even though there was no contact between the hulls or equipment of the boats) and so W was already breaking rule 11 when contact was made by the crew member of the right-of-way boat; thus rule 2 The contact was an infringement of rule 14, but rule 14(b) explicitly prohibits the right-of-way boat being penalized under this rule when the contact does not
There's not a perfect case for this but case 73 and 74 in the casebook are worth reading.
Yes, particularly Case 73 'action could have no other intention than to cause W to break rule 11'
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