Wow...

I've attended too many seminars (rules, RC, judging), and the more times I attend, the more I learn: (1) How to learn and (2) How to use the rule book (not as a weapon, but a tool). In my experience, the definitions should actually be in the front of the book, they are so important.

Taking everything else aside for a minute, the most disturbing thing about this thread remains the number of posts where people are unsure of the rules, and are not willing to look them up (I alluded to this in an earlier post). If you're not willing to do it now (and clearly don't know the rules), how do you manage this in a race?

I have a great idea on how to fix this. We should have a rules quiz at every regatta (open book), including common situations such as those listed here (there haven't been any "tricky" situations given here), and rank the sailors based on their quiz score, and count that as Race #1. In a perfect world, everyone would be tied with a bullet before touching the water.

Mike