There is no doubt in my mind that Starboard was overlapped with all three port boats. I have no idea on if the port boats would be overlapped with each other. It comes down to if Starboard gave the inside boats room and time to round in a seaman like manner.
Exactly.... Now Seaman like is the issue. Seaman like is NOT necessarily FAST, NOT TACTICAL (enter wide... come out close) Seaman like IS CONTROLLED.... SEAMAN LIKE IS NOT ARBITRARY!
I'll go further and say that a single handed boat needs a lot more room to turn a mark in a seaman like manner. All boats are not equal. It's damn hard to jibe, take a chute down and turn the mark at the same time single-handed. What is seaman like at a Club race is not nessessarily seaman like at a Nationals. The playing level changes.
NO... now you are on the slippery slope to NASCAR. You cannot go racing when you are expecting the other boats to make snap judgements on the skill level of the boats on their inside.
The single handed boat... should snuff their chute early....They then can control their boat in a seaman like manner in the rounding. It was their call to push the edge of their skill level. The other boats in the fleet EXPECT the single hander to behave just like any other 16 foot boat in the regatta.
Likewise, in a monohull regatta... if you are sailing shorthanded... and you flub the rounding and don't sail it in a seaman like way... any boats you foul are your fault. It was your call to mix it up. We just made this call a week ago when the skipper made the call to give up the lead and inside position BECAUSE THE CREW WAS GREEN and judged the risk as too high
Room is the next issue.... Assuming the three inside boats were rounding in a seaman like manner... collisions are not room. So... somebody was at fault. If boats one and two on the inside had adequate room to round in the conditions in a seamanlike manner and did not collide.... the question becomes... how much less room did boat three have....
There is not total agreement in the judging community about how much room is enough. While I agree that some consideration should be given to the base skill level of the event, the rules do not excuse poor seamanship at all. If a boat entitled to mark-room takes more room than necessary due to a mishandled spinnaker takedown, then she may break rule 10, 11, or 12 in the process.
Regards,
Eric
The Base skill level of the fleet was NOT a consideration here... it was a club event.... No expectation that competitors were world class... (I am not even sure that you can make this claim about 1 through 100 at any catamaran world event... but that is another discussion)
The first point is... that Control of your boat is Seamanlike..
The second point is.... Protest Committees are the BEST WAY to sort out the game... The culture that we don't protest generates this kind of crap after the fact.
There was a small amount of tapping of hulls, side to side, no damage that I could see. At what point should the outside boat stop luffing the inside boats?
After he taps them, or before?
At a PC hearing... you would have had to read the rules before you walked in and made your case that you were denied room..... (hint hint... indicating that boats had to tap to have a protest means that you have no clue about the current rules....) You could be in the right... BUT... choosing to litigate on the forum with the loaded language that you used is just crap!!!
