World Sailing just released a Rapid Response Call for Team
Racing that has a number of interesting interpretations of the rules. Although Team Race Calls are only authoratative
for team racing, they represent the thoughts of a number of rules experts*, and
when calls do not involve special rules for team racing (as this RR Call does
not) they frequently are useful as interpretations of the rules for fleet
racing as well.
Here’s the RR Call:
WORLD
SAILING RAPID RESPONSE TEAM RACING CALL 2019.001
Rule
11 On the Same Tack, Overlapped
Rule
18 Mark-Room
Question
B and Y are approaching the finishing
line. Y enters the zone on port tack above the finishing mark and clear ahead
of B. Y bears away towards B and gybes onto starboard tack as she passes outside
the finishing mark. Y then gybes back onto port tack to windward of B and
immediately luffs rapidly towards the finishing line. B holds her course and
there is contact at position 4. B protests. What is the umpire call?
Answer
Penalize B.
When Y enters the zone clear ahead of B
rule 18.2(b) applies and B must thereafter give Y mark-room. However, when Y
gybes onto starboard tack rule 18 no longer applies because rule 18.1(a) applies;
see Case 132.
When Y gybes back onto port tack the boats
are on the same tack and rule 18 applies. Y is again entitled to mark-room
under rule 18.2(b) because it was not turned off by any of the conditions in 18.2(d).
Her mark-room is room to leave the mark on the required side.
Y fails to keep clear of B and breaks rule
11. Because Y promptly luffed towards the finishing line, she was sailing
within her entitled mark-room and is exonerated under rule 21. B was required
to give mark-room to Y and did not bear away to do so. Therefore, B has failed
to give mark-room and breaks rule 18.2(b).
See also Team Race Call E10 Question 4.
This call is valid until 31 December 2019.
The main motivation for this call, I think, is the interpretation
that, even though Y is sailing downwind for part of the time, the boats are on
a “beat to windward”. This
interpretation comes from newly rewritten Case 132, which states that, for the
purpose of rule 18.1 (When Rule 18 Applies) boats are on a beat to windward if the
proper course for both is close-hauled or if one or both of them have overstood
the upwind laylines of a mark. In the
new RR Call, the proper course for B is close-hauled and Y has overstood the
port-tack layline of the finishing mark, so according to Case 132 the boats are
on a beat to windward, and according to rule 18.1, while they are on opposite
tacks rule 18 does not apply to them. During that time, it’s just port-starboard; Y has right of way over B.
The issue of whether rule 18 applies to boats on opposite
tacks at a finishing mark, when one of them has overstood the mark, was widely
discussed in rules forums last year. As
Case 132 was written at the time, those boats were not on a beat to windward,
leading to the possibility that a boat might purposely overstand the port
layline at the port-end pin, then claim mark-room from a starboard-tack boat
that was beating to the finish. World
Sailing fixed this by issuing a new version of Case 132 last November.
So rule 18 turns off at position 2 because Y and B are on
opposite tacks on a beat to windward.
Fine. But when Y jibes back onto
port tack, rule 18 comes back in force.
So now, neither boat enters the zone during the current application of
the rule, so we need to look at rule 18.2(a), right?
No, according to the RR Call, wrong. Rule 18 has “memory”: If rule 18.2(b) is in effect and rule 18 gets
suspended, then comes back into effect again, the boat that was clear ahead or overlapped inside at the zone still is entitled to mark-room, unless she tacks, leaves the zone, or has been given
all the mark-room to which she is entitled (see rule 18.2(d)). (None of those exceptions applies in the RR
Call scenario.)
This is not the first time the concept of "memory" has been
enunciated. In Team Race Call E10, the
boat required to give mark-room at a windward mark tacks and then tacks back
into an inside overlap. In that situation,
it makes a lot of sense to re-impose rule 18.2(b); rule 18.2(d) only turns off rule 18.2(b) when the boat entitled to mark-room tacks, leaves the zone or has been granted mark-room; the other
boat cannot escape her obligation to give mark-room by tacking or leaving
the zone herself. And, I suppose, once that
“memory” interpretation has been made in Call E10, it must apply even in situations
where the boat required to give mark-room doesn’t tack or leave the zone – as
in the new RR Call.
The next question answered in the new RR Call is whether Y is
sailing within the room to which she is entitled. There are two interesting issues here. First, the only room BB is required to grant to Y at positions 2 and 3 is room to round the mark as required to sail the
course and room to leave the mark on the required side (see the definition mark-room). Y could take that room by sailing out and
around astern of B, but the RR Call asserts that when Y cuts inside B she is
sailing within the room to which she is entitled. In other words, the definition should be read
in a common-sense manner and Y is entitled to carry out the rounding and
passing maneuver in the natural way, inside B.
The second issue is whether Y "takes too much room" during the scenario. According to the text of the Question, as soon
as Y jibes onto port tack she “luffs rapidly”, implying that after she jibes
she takes the minimum space she needs to round inside B (the boats are
keelboats, so Y’s arc seems unnecessarily wide to dinghy sailors, but the words
about luffing rapidly assure us she is not taking too much room in positions 2-3). However, if
we look at her entire track since she entered the zone, she clearly takes more
space than she needs to sail to the mark and round it on the required side. The key here is she
doesn’t need the protection of mark-room until she jibes back onto port tack, so before that moment she can sail
where she pleases. When Y loses
her right of way just after position 2, she is entitled to the space she needs
to round the mark in a seamanlike way, starting
at that position.
To see a common application of this principle in another context, consider the
diagram below. Yellow enters the zone at
a leeward mark clear ahead of Blue.
Because she is clear ahead, she has right of way; and in any case, Blue
cannot reach her. Until
position 2 Yellow does not need to rely on her right to mark-room, so, instead of sailing to the mark she sails
wide (but not wider than her proper course – see rule 18.4). When she jibes onto port tack, she is
required to keep clear of Blue, who is on starboard tack. Blue has to take avoiding action, so according
to the definition keep clear, Yellow
breaks rule 10 (Port-Starboard).
Suppose Blue protests Yellow for that infraction. Yellow’s defense is that she was sailing
within the mark-room to which she was entitled, and is therefore exonerated
under rule 21 (Exoneration). Blue argues
that Yellow’s entitlement was room to sail to the mark, room to round it as
necessary to sail the course, and room to pass it on the required side. Yellow, she says, was sailing outside the
room to which she was entitled in two ways.
First, she didn’t sail to the mark wen Blue gave her room to do so, and
second, the definition room includes
the word “promptly”; by sailing wide on her proper course instead of
sailing directly to the mark, Yellow failed to carry out the mark-rounding
maneuver promptly. Therefore, Blue says,
Yellow should be penalized for breaking rule 10 just before position 3.
The protest committee should decide that when Yellow was clear ahead she was not required to approach the mark “promptly”
because she had right of way. Once she
lost that right of way and thus really needed mark-room to protect her, she was
then obliged to sail to the mark and round it promptly, as she did, so she is
exonerated under rule 21. And that is the principle used in coming to the conclusion in RR Call 2019.001.
*Note: I am a member of
the World Sailing Team Race Rules Working Party, which edited and approved the
new RR Call, but the views expressed here are my own and do not represent the
views of that working party or of any of its other members.
