Situation: In a dinghy race, two boats, PL and PW, are on port tack, approaching S on starboard tack. S is on the starboard-tack layline outside the zone (see diagram). PL is bow-out on PW but overlapped with her, and PL will have to change course substantially to avoid S. At position 1, she hails PW for room to tack. At the moment she hails, there is no chance PL will be able to tack short of S, but PW can do so easily, and does. Then PL ducks S and tacks on her hip. PL fetches the mark nicely but PW, alas, does not. PW protests. What is your call?
Analysis: Rule 20 HAILING FOR ROOM TO TACK allows PL to hail because she’s on a close-hauled course, S is an obstruction to both her and PW, PL will have to change course substantially to avoid S, and of course S is not a mark so there’s no issue of whether SW is fetching the obstruction. Rule 20 requires PW to tack as soon as possible or to hail, “You tack!” and she elects to tack as soon as possible, which is pretty much immediately. The same rule requires PL to tack as possible after PW tacks, but “as soon as possible” for PL is after she passes S, so that’s when she tacks. No rule is broken; PW is simply screwed.
I can hear you saying “But PW could have hailed ‘You tack!’ and then claimed room to pass behind S!” Unfortunately, the Preamble to Section C says that if rule 20 applies (and it surely applies here, as PL has already hailed for room to tack) then rule 19 does not. So PL is under no obligation to give PW room to duck S, and if PW tries to go between PL and S, PL can bear away to avoid a collision between PW and S (see rule 14), and then protest. The protest committee should find that PW broke rule 11 (Windward/Leeward) and PL broke no rule.
It’s actually a little worse than that for PW, because even if she manages to duck S without fouling PL, she’s still stuck for what to do when PL tacks just after she passes S, as required by rule 20. PW is required to give PL room to tack and clear her, but how can she do that when S is right in the way? So PW is likely to break rule 20 even if she didn’t break rule 11 when she ducked S.
The US SAILING Racing Rules Committee is proposing to change the Preamble to Section C so that rule 19 still applies in this situation. We still have to allow boats to hail when they’re inside the zone, and obviously such a hail could prevent a boat from sailing to the mark, so we still have to “turn off” rule 18 when rule 20 applies, and we propose to do so, inside rule 20 itself.
The ISAF Submissions from US SAILING are posted on the US SAILING website, at http://raceadmin.ussailing.org/Rules/ISAF_Rules_Submissions.htm, along with a convenient form for comments and suggestions. There are several submissions, and unfortunately they are hard to read because of the required ISAF format, but I urge anybody who is interested in what’s happening with the Racing Rules of Sailing to wade through those submissions and, if you find things you don’t like (or that you do like), fill out the comment form. These changes won't be acted on by ISAF until November -- they're only proposals at this point -- so now is the time for us to catch any mistakes we’ve made, or to turn us away from the direction we’re going, if the proposed changes aren’t good ones.
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