In my most recent two blogs on this site, I’ve pointed out a couple of problems with the current rule 20: A boat hailed for room to tack can’t legally pass the hail on to a boat that’s to windward of her; and a leeward port-tack boat approaching a starboard-tack boat can legally use rule 20 to “scrape off” the boat to windward of her, then duck the starboard-tacker. Both of those are unintended consequences of the way rule 20 is written, and the US Racing Rules Committee has proposed to change the rule in 2013, to fix those problems.
In this blog, I’ll explore another problem with current rule 20: It starts with the words “When approaching an obstruction, a boat sailing close-hauled or above may hail for room to tack and avoid another boat on the same tack,” so if a boat hails for room to tack when she’s not on a close-hauled course (say, she’s on a reaching leg) then she doesn’t break any rule.
OK, I agree that’s a technicality. But what isn’t a technicality is that the hailed boat doesn’t have to respond if the hailing boat is not sailing close hauled or above, because in that circumstance rule 20 doesn’t apply. Suppose Larry is sailing a slow, old cruising boat and Will is to windward in his brand-new hot racing boat. They’re both on starboard tack approaching a pile of rocks that Larry isn’t fetching, and Larry hails for room to tack. Will looks under the boom and sees that Larry isn’t even close to what Will thinks of as a close-hauled course, so he shouts “You’re not close hauled! I don’t have to tack!”
Of course, Larry might protest and later, after somebody picks him up off the rocks, convince a protest committee that he was indeed close hauled when he hailed, but so what? His boat is gone. Rule 20 is supposed to be a safety rule, and as such, it should require Will to tack and, if he thinks Larry was below his close-hauled course, protest. In order for that to happen, the rule needs to apply regardless of the hailing boat’s course.
Both US SAILING and the Royal Yachting Association (the British equivalent of US SAILING) are proposing to move the expression about the hailing boat’s course down into the section about when a boat shall not hail. This, I think, fixes the problem: the windward boat has to either tack or hail “You tack” and give the other boat room to tack and avoid her. So under that rule, Larry’s boat will float to sail another day.
There’s one problem with the British proposal, though, which in my opinion makes the US proposal better: The Brits simply move the course issue into rule 20.3 When Not to Hail, leaving rule 20 as beginning,
“When approaching an obstruction, a boat may hail for room to tack and avoid another boat on the same tack. After a boat hails, …”.
We felt that with nothing about a close-hauled course, nor about needing to change course for the obstruction, etc., this introduction gives too little information about what the rule is all about and where on the race course it should be used; so new readers will simply say “What the hey?”
To solve this problem and to make the rule look more like the other rules of Section C (and of the rest of Part 2), we’re proposing to move all of the stuff about when a boat can hail to the front of the rule. So our rule 20 would begin:
“When approaching an obstruction, a boat may hail for room to tack and avoid a boat on the same tack, but she shall not hail if
(a) she is sailing below close-hauled,
(b) she can avoid the obstruction safely without making a substantial course change, or
(c) the obstruction is a mark and a boat that is fetching it would be required by rule 20.2(b) to change course as a result of the hail.
This proposal and the rest of the US SAILING Racing Rules submissions to ISAF are available at http://raceadmin.ussailing.org/Rules/ISAF_Rules_Submissions.htm. Please take a look at them and tell me what you think. These changes won't be acted on by ISAF until November, so now is the time for us to catch any mistakes we’ve made, or to turn away from the direction we’re going, if the proposed changes aren’t good ones. Fill out the response form on the page above, send me an email, or submit a comment to this blogsite. Whatever way you choose to comment, I’ll be happy to read it and either suggest to the US Racing representatives to ISAF that we change our submission, or discuss the matter further with you.
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