Those club races are fun. Nobody protests, but a lot of situations arise from the close racing on vastly different boats. After Tuesday race rule question, here is the Thursday race one (yup racing is every evening this week. I'm tired!)
On the starting line, before the gun, three boats side by side on starboard. On leeward, a Flying Fifteen (keel boat), then a little further back but with an overlap me on a F16, and then a Wayfarer (slow boat) which is really close to the line.
We got onto this position slowly, but I believe the wayfarer was parked first, the FF came in later and I sneaked the nose of my boat through he hole between the two in the last minute before the start.
We are all very close to each other and 30 seconds before the start the FF starts to luff me to make himself a hole. I do go up shouting to the Wayfarer to follow suit. The Wayfarer complies and do end up crossing the line early and stopped nose to wind.
The Wayfarer was stuck there, with nowhere to go, it was head to wind, had no drive anymore and could not tack anyway due to the number of boats coming on its starboard side. From my point of view an obstruction.
The gun goes and the FF still pinch me. I shout at him that I need room but as he bear away to power off the back end of his boat swings even closer to me. In order to avoid it I went up and banged hull (without damage) with the wayfarer. It was the wayfarer or the FF really, I was running out of space at that point.
No protest were filed, but my understanding is that the FF should be penalized for failure to give room to keep clear. He had plenty of room below him to bear away but choose to luff us up to the point we couldn't do anything but bang hulls. I should be penalized for contact, but exonerated as I was compelled to do it by the FF breach of the rules. Is my analysis correct? The FF was trying to argue at the bar that I "barged into the line" and that is was all the fault of the catamaran sailors, those young hooligans who don't sail proper boats. I don't agree with the wording "barging", as I came in slow, but I don't think anyway that there is any rule preventing me to go between two boats parked on the start line. He didn't defend my entry into that hole when I approached.
