Too many protests were tossed on technicalities, which is BAD FOR THE SPORT.
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The Hobie Class (IHCA) has siezed on this opportunity to state that flags are not required for ANY Hobie classes, regardless of length. This requires a proper SI, which is one of the items covered in our template.
Unfortunately, too many regattas go the other way. Youth events seems to be the worst. They want flags, hails, and RC notification at the end of the race. Good judges often allow protests without all of these things being met, if RRS and good judgement allow. Mainly, they want to use the hearings to help the kids learn.
The intent of RRS 61.1 "Informing the Protestee", is to give the protested boat a fair opportunity to exonerate herself on the water. If you dont' properly inform the protestee, then your protest is invalid and will likely be thrown out in a hearing. I hate to see this happen (although I've thrown out such protests myself), as it rarely yields a positive outcome.
Class rules cannot modify RRS 61 (see RRS 86.1(c)). If a class wants to require, or not require a red flag, then those changes need to be in the sailing instructions, and possibly the notice of race.
It's very common for Sailing Instructions to add protest requirements, such as informing race committee, or requiring protests to be on official forms. Personally, I dislike such additions. They serve race committee, not the sailors. When presented with a protest that meets RRS 61, but not the SIs, I will look for a way to invalidate the sailing instruction and allow the hearing to continue. Many SIs don't fully conform to RRS 86.1, which helps.
In my experience, youth sailors are the most sportsmanlike. In all the high-school event protests I've heard, the sailors were universally polite, accepting, and appreciative - even when they lost the protest. They often ask the protest committee to explain the ruling, but I've never had one dispute it. I was at one SAISA event where the PC considered throwing out one of the coaches, but the competitors' behavior was exemplary.
Hailing "starboard." I agree with Mark, this is annoying and pointless, IF you are sailing in a good fleet, are comfortable with the ability of the boat on port, and they are looking at you.
If you are confident that a port boat sees you, understands her obligations, and has sufficient skill to fulfill them, then yes - a hail is superfluous. I typically only hail "starboard" if I suspect the port tack boat may not have seen me. Think of it as a one-word way of asking "hey, do you know I'm here"? When someone hails "starboard" to me, I simply respond "hold your course", which is a short way of saying "yes, I know you're there and I'm going to keep clear of you (as required by rule 10) as long as you fulfill your obligation under rule 16".
Cross/tack. When I said earlier that you might want the port boat to cross rather than tack, this really has nothing to do with lee-bows. Generally, cats don't tack quickly enough to get in the proper position to pull this off, and the speed of our boats generally affects the airflow in such a way to make this ineffective.
True. The "lee-bow" is generally not an effective maneuver for catamarans. The tack is too expensive (if you can lee-bow, you can probably cross), and being on someone's weather-hip typically isn't as big a disadvantage for cats as for monohulls. Generally speaking, it's usually more advantageous to cross and then tack.
Regards,
Eric
