Area C SI's are planning on using this language in the SI's.

8.0 THE COURSE Courses will be Windward-Leeward, see attached diagram with the leeward gate being located approximately 100 yards to windward of the start/finish line. The leeward gate will be a represented by two marks. Marks will be inflated orange cylinders or balls. If a Gate mark is missing and the RC has not placed an object or boat at the gate location with code flag M, then the remaining gate mark shall serve as the rounding mark and is to be left to Port.

This is a all a case of what to do when good races go bad. It almost never happens, but does, and it's best to be prepared.

That being said, there is no 100% fix that will always work. Murphy just won't have it. The language in Mark's example is as good as you can get (without additional wordsmithing that wouldn't change much), but cannot deal with every scenario.

What do I mean? How many times have you seen a gate mark get caught by a boat and start going away? Suppose that's the right gate (looking upwind). Now boats will be rounding the left mark to starboard as long as they can see the "old" right mark. Suppose the gate boat is helping a capsized boat when this is all going down? When does the SI "fix" requiring boats to round the remaining mark to port take effect, and what kind of mayhem might ensue?

Advice from the pro PROs (i.e. AC and Olympics): Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, then apologize and reconstruct later. The trick (and this is WAY easier than it sounds) is knowing when to do nothing to make the big picture better. Being open and honest with the OA, sailors and jury is often the best trait a PRO can have.

Mike

The best PROs I know (up to the Olympic level) are pretty strong advocates for the sailors. On the occasion when they've made a mistake (and we all make mistakes from time to time) that disadvantages a boat, they've owned up honestly and asked the protest committee to give redress.

As a judge, I tend to weigh in on these questions with what the rules require. As a sometimes PRO, I've learned that absolute adherence to the rules is not always the best course of action. A race may run smoother by letting an error go - as long as it doesn't disadvantage anybody. I like to call that a "non-redressable offense". Case in point: A one-design fleet is sailing downwind towards shore and you're watching approaching bad weather. You decide to shorten course at the leeward mark, but the mark boat doesn't get the sierra flag up before the first boat has rounded. Technically, it's too late to shorten now. Practically, however, you can do it anyway and just award the lead boat first place. For safety's sake, you need to send the boats in, and that action doesn't make anybody's position worse.

In Mark's example above, when multiple things go wrong and RC is unable to correct a problem on the course, a good PRO will monitor the situation and ask himself "is this race still a fair test of skill?". If so, he'll let it go. If not, and there's no way to solve the problem, he has the option of pulling out the november flag and abandoning the race.

Regards,
Eric

Exactly. Had a great example of an "intentional RC error" last week. Saved a ton of time in the room, and resulted in a sportsmanship trophy being awarded at a JO event.

Mike