The 2009 ISAF Annual
Conferences are over, and there have been some changes made to future versions
of the Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS).
A few of those changes go into effect on January 1, 2010; the others won't
go into effect until we have the next rulebook, in 2013. In this blog, I'll run though the
changes that go into effect this coming January 1.
When I show a rule below,
any text that is struck through is in the current rule and will be deleted
starting in 2010, and any bold text is new for 2010.
There are six changes that
go into effect this January 1: One change to rule 18, Mark-Room; one change to
the definition of Obstruction; one
change to the definition of Party
to a hearing; one change to Appendix B for windsurfers to agree with the change
in rule 18; a new mark-room rule in Appendix C for match racing; and a bunch of
amendments to appendices having to do with advertising. The good news is, for most fleet sailors there will
be no impact from any of these changes.
IMMEDIATE
Change 1, Rule 18.2(c)
This change simply corrects a mistake I and the rest
of the Section C Working Party made when we drafted the new rule 18, and is
discussed at length in an earlier blog I published on this site. The change was proposed by the same
working party who made the error in the first place, and had universal support
amongst sailors and rulies alike:
18.2 Giving Mark-Room
(c) When a boat is required to give mark-room by rule 18.2(b), she shall continue to do so even if
later an overlap is broken or a
new overlap begins. However, if either boat passes head to wind or if
the boat entitled to mark-room passes
head to wind or leaves the zone, rule 18.2(b) ceases to apply.
Without this change, a boat
approaching a leeward mark could spin just before she got to a pack of boats
that she owed mark-room to, and then simply sail inside them without breaking
any rules. This maneuver has been
used successfully a few times in both team racing and fleet racing, so the ISAF
RRC felt this was important enough to warrant an urgent change. To work, the move had to be done in
light air, in slow, highly maneuverable boats such as Tech Dinghies or
Interclubs, so unless you sail one of those classes you were never going to see
it – and even then, you might not have done so. In any case, the "spin and win" play won't work
after this coming January 1.
IMMEDIATE
CHANGE 2, Definition Obstruction:
This change removes boats
entitled to room or mark-room from the list of things that can be
obstructions:
Obstruction An object that a boat could not pass without changing
course substantially, if she were sailing directly towards it and one of her
hull lengths from it. An object that can be safely passed on only one side and
an area so designated by the sailing instructions are also obstructions. However, a boat racing is not an obstruction to other boats unless they are required to keep
clear of her, give her room or mark-room or, if rule 22 applies, avoid her. A vessel under
way, including a boat racing, is
never a continuing obstruction.
I discussed this issue at
length in a previous blog; in my opinion, it will clear up some potential
"conflicts" between rule 18 (Mark-Room) and 19 (Room to Pass an
Obstruction), but it might also make it more difficult to see quickly which
boats around you are obstructions.
In order for this change to
work properly, sailors must realize that if Boat O is required to give Boat M
room at an obstruction, or mark-room at a mark, and Boat M is required to give
room or mark-room to Boat I, then Boat O must give Boat M space to provide room
to Boat I. In the diagram below, O
is required by rule 18.2 to give M room to sail "to the mark". That means that in the absence of I, M
is only entitled to room to sail directly to a point near the mark where she
will begin to turn to round it.
But because M owes mark-room to I, the space M needs to sail "to
the mark" includes the space she needs to give I to do likewise.
The Section C Working party
had submitted a proposed new ISAF Case that said, "Room is defined as the space needed for a seamanlike
maneuver, and it is not seamanlike to break the
rules." This proposed Case
was not approved by ISAF, though the ISAF Racing Rules Committee agreed that
the principle was valid in general.
The reason they didn't approve the new Case was the following
argument: Suppose that two boats
are on starboard tack, approaching the starting line to start, and the Z Flag
or Black Flag is flying from the RC boat (see rules 30.2 and 30.3). If the leeward boat luffs the windward
boat, she must give that boat room to keep clear (see rule 16.1). But if the windward boat breaks the
plane of the starting line, she will break rule 30.2 or 30.3, so according to
the general principle above, it would not be seamanlike for her to do so. Thus, if in keeping clear she is forced
to enter the "forbidden triangle", she could get the leeward boat
disqualified and claim exoneration for breaking rule 30.2 or 30.3. This is clearly not the result we intended
when we drafted the Case! I
predict that a new Case will be submitted next year, saying something like,
it's not seamanlike to break to rules of Part 2 and rule 31. If you have some good words to achieve
this succinctly and clearly, please let me know!
IMMEDIATE
CHANGE 3, Definition Party
This change came from the
ISAF Race Officials Committee, and is simply common sense. The problem came up as a result of a
redress hearing at last year's US Olympic Trials (the Hall v. Rios
controversy). The change is as
follows:
Party A party to a hearing: a
protestor; a protestee; a boat requesting redress or for which redress is
requested by the race committee or considered by the protest committee under
rule 60.3(b); a race committee acting under rule 60.2(b); a boat or competitor that may be penalized under
rule 69.1; a race committee or an organizing
authority in a hearing under rule 62.1(a).
Under the current rules, if a boat requests redress
then she is a "party" to the redress hearing (so she gets the right
to question witnesses, to remain in the room while other witnesses are
questioned, to ask for a reopening of the hearing under certain conditions, to
appeal the decision, etc.); but if the redress hearing was originally requested
by the race committee or brought by the protest committee on the boat's behalf,
then she is not entitled to those privileges. This is clearly unfair and unintended. In drafting the change, Charley Cook,
the ISAF Race Officials Committee chairman, realized that the same privileges
should be granted to race committees and protest committees when they were
involved in the situation that led to the hearing. For some reason, the ISAF Racing Rules Committee didn’t want
to make protest committees parties to hearings involving their own actions, so
they only extended the definition to race committees. Theoretically, this means that if a competitor files for
redress based on an improper action of the protest committee and a new panel is
formed to hear the redress request, then the old protest committee cannot both
testify about their actions and defend them – they have to be excused from the
room during the argument phase of the protest (see rule 63.3(a) – I read
"protest committee" there as meaning the current panel, not the old one). In practice this doesn't happen, and in
any case the change is good, and shouldn't be very controversial.
IMMEDIATE
CHANGE 4, Appendix B
Appendix B, for windsurfing, restates rule 18.2(c);
so when ISAF changed that rule (see CHANGE 1 above) they had to change Appendix
B as well. For the record, here's
the change:
Rule B3.1(c)
Rule 18.2(c) is changed to:
When a board is required to give mark-room by rule 18.2(b), she shall continue to do so even if
later an overlap is broken or a
new overlap begins. However, if either board the board entitled to mark-room
passes head to wind rule 18.2(b)
ceases to apply.
IMMEDIATE
CHANGE 5, Appendix C
This is a new rule for match racing, unrelated to any
of the other changes. It says:
C2.12 Rule 18.2(e) is changed to ‘If a boat
obtained an inside overlap and
from the time the overlap began,
the outside boat has been unable to give mark-room, she is not required to give it.’
Obviously, if you're not a match racer this new rule
won't affect you directly. But it's
an interesting change, and needs some explanation. Rule 18.2(e) says "If a boat obtained an inside overlap
from clear astern and, from the time the overlap began, the outside boat has been unable to give mark-room, she is not required to give it." The phrase "obtained [the] inside
overlap from clear astern"
was not in the 2005-2008 rules, and the match-race folks wanted to revert to
the old rule.
Why would they want that? Consider the situation shown in the diagram below, taken
from Match Race Call UMP 34. The
mark is to be left to starboard.
In this situation, when A and X enter the zone they
are on opposite tacks, so rule 18 does not apply to them; and so when X tacks
rule 18 applies but rule 18.2(b) doesn't
-- meaning that the only mark-room rule that could apply is rule
18.2(a), which simply gives the inside boat mark-room. At about position 4, X becomes the
inside boat, and as soon as X passes head to wind, A is required to give X mark-room. But A physically cannot provide that
room, so X has to go the wrong side of the mark and when she protests, she wins
the protest. The reason rule
18.2(e) doesn't apply here is that X established the overlap by tacking, not
from clear astern. Note that rule
18.3 doesn't apply because A is not fetching the mark – she has to tack to pass
to windward of it (see definition Fetch).
Under the new rule C2.12, A does not have to provide
room if she cannot do so from the time the overlap begins, i.e., from the time
X passes head to wind. On the face
of it, this seems like a good change, but I don't think it is well
thought-out. Consider the simple
and very common situation diagrammed below:
In this case, X tacks ahead and to leeward of A, and
so close to the mark that she cannot physically give A mark-room. Using the same arguments as before, we
see that rule 18.2(a) applies from the time X passes head to wind, so she must
give A mark-room. If she cannot do
so and the boats are fleet racing, X breaks rule 18 when she fails to give
mark-room – rule 18.2(e) does not apply because the overlap was established by
X's tack, not from clear astern.
But if the boats are match racing under new rule
C2.12, X does not have to give A mark-room because there is no physical way she
can provide space for A between her and the mark. Rule C2.12 says that since she was not able to provide room
from the time the overlap began, she does not have to do so. A must go the
wrong side of the mark, and if she protests she receives a green flag. Furthermore, if she interferes with X's
mark rounding she may well break rule 23.2 (see my earlier blog on this
topic).
Note that rule 13 applies between positions 1 and 2,
and X must keep clear of A while she's tacking; but if X is a length or so
ahead of A, that isn't hard for her to do. Additionally, after X completes her tack she must initially
give A room to keep clear, but in the situation above A can easily keep clear
by going the wrong side of the mark.
So, I think this is a new match-racing move for X,
and guess what? It gives the boat
on the left side of the leg control over the boat on the right – exactly the
opposite of the current match race status!
IMMEDIATE CHANGE 6, Advertising
The last change is purely technical; it simply
conforms all the rules that refer to advertising to the wording in the
Advertising Code in ISAF Regulation 20.
We used to have categories of advertising, with Category A being the
most restrictive. These Categories
have been eliminated in the Code, so ISAF removed the references to Category A
in the RRS, and at the same time cleaned up some other wording. There was clearly no urgency about this
change (most of which was in Appendix K, which is not even a rule), and the change
would normally have waited until 2013 to take effect; but because there were
going to be other Immediate Changes (see 1-5 above) anyway, ISAF went ahead and
made the advertising edits "urgent", putting them into effect this
coming January 1. For the record,
here they are:
J1.2 The
notice of race shall include any of the following that will apply and that
would help competitors decide whether to attend the event or that conveys other
information they will need before the sailing instructions become available:
(1) that competitor advertising will be restricted to
Category A or that boats will be required to display advertising chosen and
supplied by the organizing authority (see ISAF Regulation 20) and other
information related to Regulation 20;
J2.2 The
sailing instructions shall include those of the following that will apply:
(1) that competitor advertising will be restricted to
Category A (see ISAF Regulation 20) and other information related to
Regulation 20;
Appendix K
2 ADVERTISING
See ISAF Regulation 20. 2.1 Competitor advertising will be restricted to
Include other applicable Category A. as
follows: ______.
information related to
Regulation 20.
See ISAF Regulation 2.2 Boats may [shall] [may] be required to display
20.(d) 20. advertising
chosen and supplied by the
organizing authority.
Appendix L
See ISAF Regulation 21 ADVERTISING
20.3(d)
information on the suppliedby
the organizing authority
advertising material. as follows: ______.
Currently rated 3.0 by 1 people
- Currently 3/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5