As I predicted in my second posting on this blog, the phrases "to the mark" and "at the mark" are going to be the subject of a lot of "opinion". My 2nd posting had only been on the air for a short time when I received the following from Rob Overton. For those of you who don't know who Rob is, he is one of the authors of the new rules. Here's a very abbreviated CV. I am very pleased to have Rob's thoughts and hope to receive regular postings from him. BUTCH ULMER
ROB OVERTON
Rob started sailing and racing sailboats in his hometown of Bellport, Long Island, in the 1950’s. He sailed on the Dartmouth College team, then competed in big and small boats in Seattle Washington, where he attended graduate school. He and his wife, Andi, moved to Sheboygan Wisconsin and campaigned an International 470 from1972 to 1979 beforemoving to Hampton Roads, Virginia, where Rob raced Lasers and J/24s. He retired from his job as a mathematician and inventor in 2000; since then, Rob and Andi have been cruisingfull-time in their Stevens Custom 50 sloop, “Akka”.
Rob became involved with the Racing Rules of Sailing in1993, when he joined the US SAILING Racing Rules Committee (RRC) in order to participate in the major revision of 1997. He has been a member of the RRC ever since, serving as chairman from 1997 through 2000. He is a member of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) Team RaceCall Book Working Party and is an International Umpire. Rob, along with Dick Rose and Ben Altman from the US and Richard Thompson and Chris Atkins from the UK, drafted the new Section C (rules for passing marks and obstructions), recently adopted by ISAF for use in 2009.
ROB'S POSTING
One of the goals of the group that drafted the new Section C rules was to preserve, as much as possible, the current sailing game. The hope was that we could simplify and clarify the rules within that constraint, so that veteran sailors could pretty much keep on sailing as they had in the past, while new sailors could read the rules and figure out what was actually going on. The resulting Section C is shorter, simpler (I think) and clearer than the old Section C. The big question is, did the game change significantly?
Only time will tell, of course. But at first analysis the answer seems to be “Mainly, no game changes – but there are a few.” In my opinion, sailors who have been fleet racing and haven’t been sailing aggressively to the edge of the current rule will find that they can continue sailing pretty much as before, without risk. Those who team-race, match-race or spend a lot of their time closing out other boats at marks and obstructions should study the changes carefully. They should definitely take the new UK-Halsey Rules Quiz when it appears in December, and they might want to read both the Team Race Call Book and Match Race Call Book available on the ISAF website.
In my next few blogs, I’m going to explore a few features of the game we play that I think have changed in the game of sailing as a result of the new rules, and few things that I think haven’t changed even though it might look as if they had.
Note: Throughout these blogs, I’ll refer to the 2005-2008 RRS as the “old rules” and to the 2009-2012 RRS as the “new rules.”
Game Change 1. The zone around marks in the new rules is 3 lengths instead of 2, and rule 18 (Mark-Room) applies when one of the boats involved reaches the zone, not when boats are “about to round”. The change from “about to round” to “in the zone” is probably not very important to most sailors, who generally only applied rule 18 at the two-length zone anyway; but the change in the size ofthe zone will definitely change the game. If you are going to make your inside move on a leeward leg you will have to do so earlier; if you tack near the port-tack layline you now have to tack 3 or 4 boatlengths short of the layline instead of 2 or 3 to avoid the implications of rule 18.3 (Tacking When Approaching a Mark). On the other hand, if you’re the inside boat you will have more time to approach and round a mark under the protection of rule 18, and if you’re on port tack at the right-hand leeward gate mark you’ll get room from outside starboard-tack boats early enough to do a jibe/drop and go round the mark, room which you might not get under the old rules.
So if you’re the type who makes your inside move half way down the leeward leg, who gets ready to give room before you reach the zone, and who is willing to duck some boats when you come into the windward markinside the zone, you won’t notice much difference in the game as a result of the zone size change. If you leave your leeward-mark move to the last minute, enjoy luffing boats inside you when you’re 2-1/2 lengths from the leeward mark, or like to tack inside starboard-tackers when you’re just a hair outside the two-length zone, you’ll notice the zone size change, big time.
Non-Game Change 1. The new definition of Mark-Room says “Room for a boat to sail to the mark, and then room to sail her proper course while at the mark.” In the first phase, while a boat is sailing to the mark, the old rule actually didn’t give any protection to the inside boat – if you read the rule literally, an outside boat could luff an inside boat to the wrong side of the mark and not break therule, as long as she let the other boat in when they were at the mark. (This is because the special definitionof “room” in old rule 18 only talks about space between the outside boat andthe mark – i.e., it only defines room when boats are at the mark, not whilethey are approaching it. So if the mark was, say, dead ahead, then old rule 18 didn’t restrict an outside right-of-way boat at all, even inside the zone.) Fortunately, that’s not how sailors interpreted the rule,and everybody pretty much understood that outside boats were supposed to give inside boats room to sail from the edge of the zone to the mark even if the rule didn’t say so. The new definition’s first part, “Room for a boat to sail tothe mark,” simply brings therules in line with what competitors are already doing.
The second phase of the new definition applies when a boat entitled to room (basically, a boat that was overlapped inside or was clear ahead at the zone) is at the mark itself. And here there’s an interesting change: the old rule only grants that boat “room”, which means space for a seamanlike rounding, whereas the new rule allows her the space she needs “to sail herproper course”. This looks like a big change, but generally I don’t think it is. The time when a boat’s proper course is to sail wide and do a “tactical rounding” (i.e., startwide and finish close), is when she’s approaching the mark, not when she’s at it – and the new Rule 18 doesn’t give a keep-clear boat entitled to mark-roomthe right to start wide, only the right to sail to the mark. Once a boat is at a mark, what is herproper course? I think that almost always, her proper course is to round it, leaving it as close as possible on the required side – exactly the same as a seamanlike rounding. Some rules authorities have suggestedthat the new rules might allow an inside boat to turn away from the mark andthen back toward it, in order to do a “tactical rounding”. But is that really true? She’s already at the mark, and if she were by herself, would she now turn away from the mark instead of toward it? I don’t think so. Turning awayfrom the mark at that point only wastes time. I think if I were on a protest committee and a sailor told me that instead of rounding the mark at that point she had sailed her “proper course” in turning away from it, I’d want to see some kind of argument demonstrating that turning the wrong way is faster than turning the right way. Wouldn’t you?
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