PART 3
She may correct any errors to comply with this rule, provided she has not finished. The easiest mistake to make is not fully to correct the error.
Blue and Yellow (fig 3) have both made the mistake at a gate mark of not passing through it from the direction of the previous mark. Blue corrects her error. Yellow does not – her taut string will not touch either gate mark, but will run directly from the previous mark to the next mark, passing nowhere near the gate.
Suppose Blue had detected her error only after having passed several further marks. Does she have to sail so as to thread her string back round those marks to get back to the mark where she made an error? No, according to RYA 2001/1.
Correcting Gate Mistakes
Course from the last mark
fig 3
She may return directly to the mark concerned. A leg has not been completed until the mark ending it has been left on the required side. A boat that makes an error by leaving a mark on the wrong side will fail the string test described in rule 28.2 unless she returns to correct her error. If she continues to sail the course, later marks have a required side as if she had not made an error. However, when a boat begins to return to correct an error, she resumes sailing the leg on which she made her error and all marks she has rounded or passed since making the error no longer have a required side. When her string is drawn taut, it will not catch on those later marks, which become relevant again only when her error has been corrected, after which they must be rounded or passed correctly.
The last sentence of rule 28.2 suggests that the act of crossing the finishing line precludes the correction of course errors. However, there are quasi-exceptions in the definition Finish. The fact that the taking of a penalty at or near the finishing line may require a second crossing has already been identified. The definition also leaves open the possibility of correcting an ‘error made at the finishing line’, namely an inadvertent hook finish.
Yellow (fig 4) has ‘hook-finished’ at position 1, but a ‘hook finish’ is no finish. She realises this and wants to correct this mistake made at the finishing line. She must first unwind back round the finishing mark – but in so doing she crosses the finishing line at position 2 in the direction of the course from the last mark. If she does nothing, she has finished, but with ‘wrong string’ (WS 128). Without the specific permission to correct her finishing line error, she will have finished with no possibility of getting her string right, and so the definition allows her to rotate again and count her crossing at position 3 as her actual finish, from which point her string will pull to a line directly to the last mark.
Correcting a Hook Finish
1
2
Finishing line 3
Direction of the course from the last mark
fig 4
The definition also discounts the crossing of the finishing line when a boat continues to sail the course. This allows correction of a mistaken crossing of the finishing line, a lap or so too soon. But if a boat realises on crossing the line that she left an earlier course mark on the wrong side, the word ‘continue’ seems to preclude sailing on to correct the mistake.
RYA The Racing Rules Explained 129
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