MERLIN ROCKET FORUM

Topic : The rules

I thought you might like to see ISAF's response to the following question.
A 001 Q&A 2007-008
Revised: 12 January 2009
Question 1
Is it a violation of Rule 2 if a competitor attempts to slow another boat's progress in a race by
covering or limiting its freedom to start, tack or jibe if this behaviour is not aimed at staying ahead
of this competitor in a race or a series of races, but instead is purely aimed at skewing the
competitor's result for the worse.
Answer 1
Yes.
For the purpose of ISAF Case 78, a race or series is restricted to those races governed by a notice
of race as published by the organizing authority for the race under consideration.

All very interesting!


Posted: 02/09/2011 13:37:42
By: Barry Dunning
surely it was aimed at staying ahead in a series of races?


Posted: 02/09/2011 13:49:56
By: John
So it was OK for Taxi to slow Geoff, but would not have been OK for anyone else to do so, as they would not have been sailing for their own boat's best position in the race or series.

Unless they were competing for a Team prize perhaps.....?


Posted: 02/09/2011 13:53:08
By: Armed Forces
It was not about staying ahead as when it started he was behind in any way that you could calculate.  

He only became ahead once the other party was below 30th place


Posted: 03/09/2011 08:56:15
By: John
I think that that particular scenario applies to percieved "mafia" sailing whereby a group of people decide who's going to win, and the rest protect him. I think this ws tested at a 14 worlds and people did get lobbed for it.


Posted: 03/09/2011 09:15:01
By: Chris M
Bear in mind before we interpret too deeply that this is not the rule itself just consequential Q&A.  If the question had been asked slightly differently as to whether it was 'staying ahead in that race or catching up in the same series of races....." the same answer may well have been given as I'm reading the Q&A interpretation as saying that covering etc is only reasonable if relevant to the race or series outcome between the boats involved -which it clearly was in this case. This also partly explains why supplemental rules are needed for team racing as in that case multi boat team outcome based justifications for such actions are allowable when I think they otherwise wouldn't be?


Posted: 09/09/2011 16:00:38
By: Geoff Wright
This answer was also relevant at the 2010 GP14 Nationals where Matt Mee attempted to hinder Simon Potts during the final race to protect his 2nd place overall. Interestingly in this particular case, Matt got his maths wrong and was not able to improve his series score. A protest by Potts was dismissed. Although after a subsequent appeal to the RYA appeals committee was also dismissed, the committee was in fact divided in it's opinion. The question in this case may have been: is believe that you will improve your series score sufficient? (and probably a whole host of other points).


Posted: 13/09/2011 13:17:49
By: Ian Dobson

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