Key West Race Week – Part Four – A Response
December 28, 2009
"STARBOARD! PROTEST! DO YOUR TURNS!"
Most of the responses to this visualization said that this was an easy one, but you should have known it couldn’t be that easy. In order to keep frivolous fouls in check, the rules are written to make both the protested and protesting boats clear a few hurdles.
Starboard certainly had to avoid contact (Rule 14) which violates Rule 10 (On Opposite Tacks). But what is important (and becoming seemingly more so) is how Starboard goes about protesting. Recently it seems that more and more PC’s are working hard to disallow protests before they get to the protest room by being STRICT about the procedural steps. So that brings us to the:
What do we do?
1) Hail “PROTEST”. This needs to be immediate, polite and clear. We should also be VERY clear on who is going to be talking to the other boats on the course. Generally, I would suggest that I’m in the best position to do so, but I am certainly open to discussing this. “Do your turns!”, “Hey, you SOOO fouled us!”, “What the f*&(@@%@^&!!!!! are you thinking!?” are NOT acceptable, and don’t need to even be mentioned (although they often are.) Just a clear “PROTEST” and the boat name or sail number will do.
2) Immediately Fly Flag and fly until we’ve finished. This seems to be the favorite “out” of the protest committees these days. We’ve got about 10 seconds to get the flag displayed. It also pays to have some sort of time mark for when we did it. So, I carry a protest flag in my PFD, in addition to the flag on the backstay/stern rail/etc. We can always pull the more permanent flag when time allows.
Interestingly, this year I acted as the arbitration officer for several big boat events. Often I was told that they flew the flag as soon as the person who was sent to fetch it from the nav table got on deck. Not good enough. I was told once that they flew it about a minute after the incident, once it was clear that everyone was OK. ISAF says you can do better than that. There was only one incident this year that, I witnessed, where a PC (arbitrator actually) said to another party “well, did you KNOW you being protested?” When the answer was yes, we moved forward in spite of some questions about the flag. Point is, we’ll be flying it and leaving it flying from as soon after the incident as possible.
3) Get back to racing. Following the incident we have done what we are required to do at this time. There are a few things that we should do before too long, but right now we need to get back to racing ASAP. Too many teams let an infraction, or the other team’s actions (or inaction) consume the conversation. For the most part, it is time to forget about it and get back to racing.
4) Write down time of hail and incident information. Given how we are structuring our team work, I think that our forward person should be able to draft an incident report immediately after we start racing again. This info is best to get down ASAP so that we can get on with the race and not worry about forgetting important info.
5) Immediately after finishing, hail the RC to declare our intentions to protest. While the SI’s for this race only request that we inform the RC that we intend to protest, some PC will take this request very seriously. This past summer I was racing at an event where the arbitrator was questioning the validity of my protest because the PC didn’t have a record of my hail. Fortunately, I had a witness (from another fleet) that was willing to testify (although it was never necessary). So I also add that we should record the time of our hail and any other hails that we might hear. Finally, we should continue to hail until the RC confirms our hail. I hate being a chatty Cathy on the radio when racing, but it always is a bummer to loose a valid protest on something minor.
6) We also should be looking for witnesses. A witness that saw the incident will make our case MUCH stronger, and knowing who to find back at the dock will make the process MUCH easier. Now is the time to do it.
7) We should as a team review the incident report to confirm that we all agree with what happened and then get ready to race again.
If it seems like a lot – that’s because it is. The key to winning in a protest situation is preparation, and I believe that begins at immediately following any incident.
How about those hails?
You are absolutely right, from a rules standpoint they have no meaning or bearing. There is no required hail of “starboard” or “hold your course” in the rule book. In fact in this situation starboard isn’t required to necessarily hold her course (and she didn’t she bore away) so the hails don’t change the situation. That said, they hails are a good idea. STARBOARD is making it clear to PORT that she doesn’t think the cross is going to happen. PORT is declaring “I’m going for it.” Communication on the course I think can improve the game that is played. It is important though that the communication be clear and not be a distraction. In this case – I think both hails helped; even if they weren’t necessary.
Now, what should THEY do?
Well, they fouled us. It is pretty clear, so what they should do is take a penalty.
According to the SI’s they have the option of either doing a One-Turn Penalty, or taking a 20%. They can do a tack and a gybe in the same direction or they can fly their yellow I flag and carrying on.
Upwind, I think the 20% penalty is worse than the one-turn penalty. So, they need to sail clear of the other competitors (or make sure they are clear of them) and do a tack and gybe in the same direction. A well executed one-turn penalty should be less of a penalty than the 20% would be. So they would have been wise to have practiced that before the regatta started. They should also start their one-turn penalty with a gybe, rather than a tack, use their sails and body weight to aggressively steer the boat through the turn and then get back to racing!
After the race is over, they should find the boat they fouled and make it clear that they they took their penalty. If they DID take a 20% penalty it will be important that they inform the race committee and file within 90 minutes of the RC docking.
So they have plenty to fret about as well.
For some, all of this is more than they want to deal with, and either do not call protest, or don’t follow through with it. I’m of the opinion that there are inadvertent that take place on the race course, and in order to have a fair game, we should enforce them. I just go back to any other game I play – basketball, tennis, squash – if a friend fouls I call it. If those fouls start to impact my game I work to improve.
Have a great day!
Protest Flag
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