Crosses to bear

Lifted this from sailing world.

http://www.sailingworld.com/experts/crosses-to-bear

" These techniques work best on boats that accelerate quickly, move a lot faster in footing mode than pointing mode, and don't lean over. "

Mark, here's an article describing how to leverage the rules to gain a tactical advantage and even promoting the use of a very grey area "hunting". From the official magazine of USSailing no less.

Looking for one thing, I found another with an equally troubling (though less obvious) correlation.

http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=11786

I don't see the link dave..

But... I agree with your point that starbords actions in changing course beyond headers and lifts is breaking the rule ... and Starbord has to call foul on themselves when they do this. (hunting is right up there with Onus in terms of misunderstood tho... cue Eric)

You and others call it a grey area because people are again arbitraging the rules... and the practice persists.

So, Port has recourse to hail protest on that one.... again... nothing more then a second bite at the apple for Starbord ... the burdened boat in that part of the RRS.

The RRS of sailing are set up for calling your own fouls... All of the gamesmanship, arbitraging the rules, intimidation, etc that are part of almost every other game I play don't work in sailing because I have to call the foul on myself.

I want to emphasize one of eric's statements.


IMO, cat sailors don't like this idea ... Responsibility to protest... and SO avoid protesting like the plague! The game does not work well if we don't remind the burdened boat to call their own fouls. YMMV.

When the system is working well.. The crosses in the game are fast safe, and reliably close.

Funny story, a friend of mine heads to Europe as crew on Tornado with an elite helm as a partner... At every close cross... he is yelling starbord, at the french, russian, german whatever, etc etc... others described it as he was looking for the chance to protest...a bit of arbitraging the rules for his advantage... a certain exuberance (as was his nature) for the rule book... Off the water, He was not so politely told to SFU, the pro's know the rules. He shut up and figured out the culture of the T fleet..where for the most part they play by the spirit of the rules ... The fleet culture was established long ago by port calling their own and starbord calling protest as they should do under the RRS.

PS.... there is a huge difference between breaking the rules and cheating.... I have never put Jake into the cheating camp. We disagree on the interpreting the rules and the behavior required by the rules.

I really don't like how that article handles rule 16.2, the rule is very clear. A starboard tack boat certainly has the ability to alter course in order to influence a port tack boat, but it's actions are limited.

16.2: In addition, when after the starting signal a port-tack boat is keeping clear by sailing to pass astern of a starboard-tack boat, the star- board tack boat shall not change course if as a result the port-tack boat would immediately need to change course to continue keeping clear.

Dialing down, or hunting, a port tack boat is an extremely common move in team racing (and match racing where 16.2 is deleted), and is perfectly legal as long as the port tack boat doesn't have to immediately change course to keep clear. So, if a starboard tack boat is altering down at a port tack boat in order to influence a cross, at a certain point they must hold their course so the port tack boat can keep clear with needing to immediately alter. While this sounds subtle, when umpiring it is pretty clear when watching the helms of each boat.

To be clear however, I would not recommend dialing down a boat while racing catamarans- the acceleration as both boats bear away is way too high, and a very dangerous situation could result, irreregardless of the fact that determining when immediately is with cats would be very difficult.

On another not, in my opinion using the rules to your advantage is not cheating- it is absolutely part of the game and knowing the rules is part of being prepared to race.