Hi Sam and Mark,

Sam, my confusion as to your opinion stems from the following: I posed the question to Mark asking if he advocated the elimination of crash boats to avoid liability
and his answer was "absolutly". Your answer was that you agreed with Marks opinion. Now I see that you agreed that
the term "crash boat" was wrong and "mark boat" was better.
Your last sentence says my opinion exactly. The more mark boats the better.

Mark, I fully agree that we can not ever provide or give the impression of providing total safety or service to racers. I've never been to an event where anyone asked for
or expected that either. In the senario that we are talking
about, many situations occur that take some time, even hours, to cross the bridge from "bad" to "tragic".
A few that spring to mind are hypothermia, drifting into rocky shores in surf, moderate bleeding, badly sealed deck
caps on an overturned boat causing gradual sinking. There
are many more. The more boats avialable to render assistance the better. The greater the odds nobody gets killed.

I think we may be arguing different points: I'm only addressing how best to save a boat in a tight spot. I think
you may be addressing how to best position the RC legally
if something does. If the two positions conflict, than
count me solidly on the side of saving people. Hence the
opinion that to not seek as many assist boats as possible simply to make it look better in court is cowardly. To not seek them feeling that they will not be needed is misguided.
But thats just my opinion, and Ive been wrong before.

Regards, Mark L.