This was not a good decision. The only way to deal with this is:

- The faulty boats should all retire.
- If not, a non faulty boat should have protested during the time limit.

If none of this happen the results stand. If you're not happy you should have protested. But throwing the results away is not a possible solution in any circumstances.

The same situation happened during an event at our club. The SI and the board displayed at the back of the committee boat called for 4 laps. The leader stopped at 3 laps, finishing in the middle of the F18 who started 10 minutes in front of us. Everyone followed but me and another boat. So most of the fleet sailed the wrong course.

As nobody retired (And they should have. They all knew: I told them) the RC rightly assumed that everything was fine and was ready to publish the results as is. The two of us who sailed the right course had to protest every other boat in the fleet to gain some attention. Being reasonable and not willing to DSQ everyone we proposed to the committee to drop the protests as long as we got redress for the 1 and 2 place, the rest of the fleet scoring after us.

The offer was accepted and the end result was nicer than simply DSQ 15 odd boats. Everyone was happy with the outcome, considering.