Depending on your class, they can be picky about actually displaying a protest flag and a hail is not valid, if you ever see a whiffle ball hanging on a dinghy boom, it's got the flag in there!
Depends on size of boat. Less than 6m flag is not required (usually).
As for hailing protest; that is not required either. If you foul, you should do your turn(s).
It's possible you get seen fouling, but out of earshot and so you cannot hear the protest hail.
Yes, be careful on that. It bit our Tybee 500 team (I was ground crew) in the *** a few years back.
Two of the boats (either accidentally or on purpose, not judging) cut inside the last buoy around the Cape. Our team filed a formal protest on the beach because they did not unwind their course to exonerate themselves and they admitted to such.
The rule in the RSS specify (61.1.a.2) a boat less than 6 meters (19'8 1/4") in length is not required to display a protest flag. The I20 is actually 20' in length so over the limit by 3.75", so our protest was thrown out on a technicality because our team didn't display a flag (don't know who could have seen it but....) It was frustrating but interesting, everyone was reading the RSS's and running around measuring hulls, a good learning experience.
I didn't realize that Ksurfer had posted the rule on page one of this thread.
