The RC is Always Right....
Except when they're wrong and succumb to pressure and personal bias...Tillerman is at it again with another assignment. Last time, in response to his request for Worst Sailing Mistakes, I posted a story about my Protest Shoe. Overall the response provided many funny stories and a few intense ones. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt (emotionally or physically) in the making of these stories.
This time the assignment is Top Race Committee Screw Ups. First and in general, these (for the most part) volunteers to a great job. We couldn't have fun racing without them. The good ones run a race or regatta in such a way you hardly know they're there. On the other hand... they do occasionally make mistakes.
In a regatta on our local lake, we were racing on Sunday. IIRC, the points were quite close. We were setting up for what was likely the final race of the regatta. The committee put up the course label and the sequence was rolling. We made sure we new the course, studied the wind patterns, kept an eye on our closest competition and determined our starting strategy. As the clock counted down to the start horn, I noticed the RC changed the course. We passed by the committee boat again just to make sure and in now time we were off.
We weren't the first boat around the windward mark so a few boats were in front of us. I looked as though they were heading for the leeward mark... only the next mark of the new course was the gybe mark. There were a couple of boats that also went to the gybe mark but the majority in our fleet missed the course change.
Once off the water, a boat in our class that went the wrong way protested the committee... Can you even do that? They wanted the last race thrown out. The interesting thing was that other fleets had the same course change (although they had more time to react). Some boats in those fleets made the same mistake and missed the gybe mark. No one else protested. They accepted their mistake and the race counted for everyone except our class... How can that be?
We never did hear a reasonable explanation for the toss out... and lost the regatta on their decision. I'm not sure we'll do anything differently next time. If the RC changes the course, you go with it and hope they stick to their guns or restart the sequence if they feel it's necessary.
Comments
In the situation you describe it seems that such redress should be allowed as under Rule 27.1 the race committee can only signal the course before the warning signal. They should not have changed it when the start sequence was rolling.
Under rule 64, the protest committee has to make as fair an arrangement as possible in granting redress. One option for them is to abandon the race, which might well be the fairest option in this situation.
Regardless of my recollection of the situation or my understanding of the specific rules involved (I'm a foredeck... so these off the water rules are not my top priority), I maintain this is a significant RC mess. Obviously, the correct thing would have been to postpone the race on the water, change the course and restart the sequence.
Certainly, after the protest committee tosses the race, the boats that sailed the changed course must become eligible for redress as their "score in a race or series has, through no fault of her own, been made significantly worse by an improper action or omission of the RC, protest committee or organizing authority." It's a no win situation at that point.