The 2015 TP52 World Championship in Puerto Portals saw a refreshing change in the pecking order, with Alberto Roemmers’ Italian/Argentinian team on the Marcelo Botín-designed Azzurra (left) sailing an immaculate series to win overall, followed by the two Judel-Vrolijk designs Platoon and Ergin Imre’s Provezza
In Case 50 it was ruled that if there is reasonable apprehension of a need to avoid a contact by the right-of-way boat, the give-way boat shall be penalised. But it is the umpires’ call whether the reasonable apprehension of the need to avoid contact was genuine… ‘Are they being presented with a Hollywood or are they witnessing a real concern?’
For sure the umpires can penalise even if there is no way the boats would have hit; in the case of a TP52, avoiding a contact by one or even two metres at 10kt is not safe, as there remains a grey area where the give-way boat is committed to the cross but if the call was not perfect cannot escape a collision without help from the right-of-way boat, or the execution is not perfect, or conditions change and slow the give-way boat or speed up her opponent. Any and all of this can certainly generate reasonable apprehension of the need to avoid contact…
Do not forget that racing a TP52 is about teamwork, and several seconds are still required by even the best teams to communicate a situation between the driver, tactician and trimmers. Possibly the answer is to sit down with your competitors and ask them to identify what for them defines too close for comfort. Of course there never will be a single answer, but between umpires and competitors it should be possible to achieve an understanding of where to draw the line between the sporting needs for racing this type of boat and keeping things safe.
To give an actual context, there were 42 umpire calls during the TP52 Worlds with 12 boats racing 10 races. That is an average of 4.2 flags per race. One first beat had three penalties… The conclusion must be that as the racing gets tighter so the teams are less shy of flying a flag.
Most calls were beyond doubt and accepted without complaint. Three calls led to onshore debate that was ‘stronger’ than the class manager likes to see. In which case, as the person responsible for the umpire team, I familiarise myself with the cases as much as I can (using video replays and so on).
For me it is key that all sides sit down together and take time to go through the case in detail. Where mistakes are clear this must be acknowledged and time spent discussing how to improve. It must be accepted that mistakes can and will be made. With more boats than we had before, we are approaching the need for a fixed structure for our debriefs – the bar is not always the best place. In the case of a heavily contested call, it may be a good step to not only sit down with umpires and the penalised boat, but to get all the teams involved. That will stop it becoming one team versus the umpires, while the debrief also helps clarify why a team raised a flag in the first place.
Beside these ponderings, Alberto Roemmers’ nearly flawless Team Azzurra was crowned 2015 TP52 world champion, owner-driver Harm Müller Spreer and Platoon were runners-up and Ergin Imre’s half pro/half amateur Provezza crew saw things finally go their way for a very emotional bronze.
Azzurra’s average hit was under the 4th place per race usually required to win overall (3.6 average, one win). Platoon averaged 5th with three wins and then Provezza, also with three wins, scraping through to third on a tie-break with Rán (4th) and Alegre (5th). Quantum Racing lost their crown in dramatic fashion with a dead last in the final race, tumbling from silver to 6th in a matter of minutes… yet still only 1pt worse than Provezza in 3rd! Looking ahead, after Copa del Rey we move on to the 2015 grand final in Cascais. Meanwhile, another five-event European series is being finalised for 2016, with two new venues (Scarlino and Mahon) ending once again in Cascais, after which the boats will ship to the US for a repeat of the previous successful US 52 Super Series – of course including 2017 Quantum Key West Race Week. Believe it or not, at the final dinner in Portals several owners were already committing to this one. My only concern is that by 2017 I am well into 65 years on this planet. Not getting any younger. Rob Weiland, TP52 class manager
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paquote@lexrisks.com www.lexrisks.com SEAHORSE 29
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