You need to get out more. Not every event has to be run the same way, nor the way you personally desire.
No one is a bigger stickler for rules than I am, but rules can and do change. What is important is that they be clear and the consequences be well understood.
I'd love to see how you can allow unlimited communications, but censor the conversations on private devices. Get back to me when you have an answer for that one...
(I know, it's easier to just accuse me of promoting cheating, isn't it?)
Mike
Past Tybee 500s had the same rule...you can talk to your ground crew, just not about strategy. David Lennard even had a waterproof bluetooth ear piece for that purpose (for whatever good it did). I remember him calling in to report that two teams had cut inside the forbidden exclusion zone around Canaveral....which was a rule application disaster. I think those teams ended up with a 20 minute penalty which was, at best, close to the advantage they gained. This was in contrast to the skipper's meeting statement that you would be disqualified if you sailed inside the zone (not only taking a buoy to the wrong side but inside a straight line between the buoys that are separated by miles).
That's been my one beef about the east coast distance racing I've done. It takes a lot of time and preparation to put together a campaign for an event like this and then you run into something that's just not fair and it takes away from it. It's not that complicated to put a genuine jury in place. Dealing with rule infractions swiftly and justly actually reduces tension and makes things go much easier.
On the flip side, I do realize that there just aren't that many bodies willing to organize and operate a race like this - so I do feel a little guilty complaining.
Has anyone ever tried a video conference jury?
One of those teams would not have fessed up if I hadn't threatened a protest.They admitted their fault (under duress) and I suspect that's why the penalty was a wash and so weak. That's one of the reasons the no protest thing worries me.
Krantz and Lennard made a fuss too and did actually file a protest with a non existant protest committee. And we woke up to nasty crap on our boat because they mistook us for Krantz' boat. That whole thing was awful and took away from the event experience. Wanna have a good trip down memory lane? Go replay the TV special footage of that next-morning skippers meeting where one of the offending team's ground crew ironically called out (negatively) the people that had made a fuss about them cutting the corner as poor sports. The whole thing just wasn't handled well and took more than 24 hours for any penalty to be adjudicated.
As I said before, I feel pretty bad by harping on this incident and I don't want it to taint all of the work and effort that Chuck and his group put into the event. Lord knows they spent a lot of time, money, and effort to make it happen - and it was overall a terrific event. However, we should be able to learn from the couple of times that things didn't go as well as they could have.
This is just one of those deals where reality and "what should be" (sailors being happily self-policing) are different and the best way to deal with it is to have something in place to handle it efficiently should the need arise. That whole situation would have been much less dramatic if it was just dealt with swiftly and there was a mechanism in place to handle the situation. Frank and I both saw both teams cut inside - they were just inside of us on the course when they consciously deviated north while we were heading out to clear the first buoy. You have a hearing, you hear the witnesses (at least four teams saw it happen), adjudicate the penalty, and go back to racing. Rip the bandaid off quickly and move along.
I would be willing to be a jury member on-call by video or phone for this event. I might even be able to organize the voice conferencing system through my Ring Central account.
