Dear All,

Today I have recevied notification from Hayling Island Sailing Club that the RYA has come to their decision regarding the appeal.  The top 10 results for the Allen Merlin Rocket National Championships 2011 are as follows (all other positions remain unchanged): 

1: Andy Davis & Tom Pygall
2: Tom Stewart & Steve Hall
3: Tim Fells & Chris Downham
4: Jon gorringe & Toby Lewis
5: Richard Whitworth & Ellie Bremmer
6: Ian Dobson & Andy Tunnicliffee
7: Dave Winder & Pippa Taylor
8: Geoff Carveth & Graham Williamson
9: Judith Massey & Olly Turner
10: Mike Clavert & Ian Garwood 

All the best
Lou

Geoff & Graham 8th!?

That makes sense if they lost their redress and so counted their final race score.

Looks like they decided that G/G were OCS afterall.

So has tom stewart now come 2nd more times than phil morrison?

It would be *very* interesting to see the final appeal documentation... Aren't these things supposed to be public?

It would be a shame if the appeal managed to duck the issue of manipulating average points though. That is an issue with implications far wider than the individual event.

The RYA appeal committee upheld the appeal to the extent that the award of Average Points was incorrect and that reinstatement of the place achieved in the race was the correct action. They also stated that they could not resolve this without the protest committe finding as a fact that 3652 was not OCS. The appeal was returned to the original protest committee chairman for him to support his own decision that 3652 should be awarded APs, by finding this fact.

The protest committee chairman refused to find this fact and so the original BFD was imposed.

Time to move on, and confirm Taxi and Tom as Champs with congratulations.

GGGGG

This is a fudge ! It is not time to move on it is time to ensure this does not happen again, and draw up better SI for future championships , no one is apologising to G / G for the mistaks made.

Still confused as to exactly what happened. So I'm not sure what the real lessons are. But the main thing is I hope Geoff and Graham will be coming to Lyme. Only 178 days away. Time to look forwards...

I do not understand how the final results were arrived at. 
My understanding is that G & G were originally scored as BFD for the race in question & protested asking for redress - claiming they were not over the line. The protest committee gave them redress but that form of redress was judged unsatisfactory by the RYA appeals committee and the case was presumably returned to the HISC protest committee for a more suitable form of redress.
Does this mean that the protest committee have reconsidered their original decision and decided not to give redress for the BFD?

The lessons are don't be over the line on a black flag start (or put yourself at risk of being called over on a black flag start) and accept the decisions of the race officer/race team. Simples.

I think Graham has clearly stated that the RYA returned the appeal for further consideration by the Championship Protest Committee, because the original protest hearing had not found as a matter of FACT that they were not over the line. 

I assume the RYA invited the committee (Or was it just the chairman?) to find, one way or the other, and as Graham has said the Chairman refused to find as fact they were NOT OVER. There was a judgement from the RYA that if they were found to be not over they must be given the 3rd place in which they finished the race. There is good case law about redress and the solution found originaly was wrong.
 
Looking at the results Geoff and Graham finished ahead of the winner in all races apart from the DSQ resulting from the race in question, which might give them some consolation.

The RYA have actually got it right for once!

The whole problem arose because the protest committee didn't have the courage of their convictions.  They should have found either that Geoff was OCS - or that he wasn't.  The obvious result is either that the black flag was correct, or that he sailed correctly and came third.  There isn't a middle ground.  I can only assume that they felt intimidated by the choice of either DSQing a prominent sailor like Geoff, or pissing off the race officer, a fellow club member and fudged it.

The good old RYA have made this exact point, and simply asked the protest committee chairman to confirm unequivocally that his committee found that Geoff was not over the line, which he could not do; if they were indecisive at the time there was never much hope that they would reach a firm decision now.  In the absence of such unequivocal confirmation the RYA have no alternative but to conclude that the black flag was applied correctly.

Nobody comes out of this sorry affair with any credit, but at least it has established a precedent for unequivocal decision-making by protest committees.  If it also results in more rigorous selection of protest committe members to ensure both their familiarity with the Racing Rules and their ability to reach firm decisions then, just maybe, it will have done some good.

Indeed, as Graham says, time to move on.  Just worth saying that if the BFD had stood on race 3 rather than the average points fudge, Taxi would STILL have wanted to sail Geoff & Graham down the fleet as they were the only boat who could beat them overall, but would just not have had to sail them *quite* so far down.