Wow. Just, wow...
I suggest more of you spend some quality time in seminars and serving on protest committees at larger (non-cat) regattas. Not to learn the rules (although, clearly, some of that is needed here), but to understand why simple is good, and accepting the rules as written is most often the best way to go.
Having said that, I do agree that a good rule change would be to allow boats to continue racing after receiving help when a crew member is in the water. It's not easy to imagine a scenario where they will gain an advantage doing this, without breaking Rule 2. [Edit: And by rule change, I mean an actual change to the RRS.]
Mike
so what happens if multiple boats require assistance to recover a crew, a support or other boat assists, but can only help one at a time. What ever boat get aided first then have a material advantage over the other aided boats. This is something that used to happen in Formula 1 Racing when cars could be pushed out of the gravel traps etc and allowed to continue racing...of course some guy would get pushed out first and others would be fuming waiting for their turn to get pushed out.
