PART 3
But when no such power is granted, then no summary steps are available to the race committee. It cannot score her DNF – Did Not Finish – when she did finish, by crossing the finishing line in the direction of the course from the last mark. DNF is reserved for boats whose only crossing of the finishing line was a clear ‘hook finish’. RET, and possibly DNF, is for boats that never came near the finishing line because they retired in mid-race. Nor can it disqualify her without a hearing. Only a protest can result in the removal of the finishing position of a boat that has finished, as defined1
.
But suppose that the race committee nevertheless scores her DNF or ‘disqualifies her’ and redress is requested. It is not the protest committee’s job to make up for the failings of the race committee. So in RYA 2006/8, the race committee’s sailing instructions unintentionally required two marks to be looped rather than left as passing marks, and two boats did not loop them. They were recorded as disqualified with a hearing without any provision in the sailing instructions for this, and they asked for redress. No hearing was called, the issue rumbled on, and the race committee then lodged a protest against them ten weeks later.
The protest committee got off to a good start by deciding that the race committee was not allowed to disqualify a boat without a hearing. It then got into a hole and kept digging. The redress it granted was a hearing, in effect of the clearly out-of-time protest. It decided that neither mark was unambiguously designated as a rounding mark, and reinstated the boats into their finishing positions. The race committee appealed, on the grounds that there was no ambiguity. The appeal was dismissed, but not over any question of ambiguity.
The protest committee was correct to decide that the race committee was not entitled to disqualify the boats without a hearing, nor, had it done so, would it have been entitled to score them DNF, since they both finished, as defined. The protest committee was incorrect to decide that a hearing (in effect, a protest hearing, at which the disqualification of the boats was a possibility) was the appropriate redress. Disqualification can never result from a request for redress alone2
.
Had the protest by the race committee been valid, then that might have resulted in the disqualification of the boats independently of the requests for redress. In fact, the protest was clearly invalid, having been lodged more than two months after the incident, and there was no reason to extend the protest time limit.
The fact that the race committee had not intended the course to include marks that had to be looped does not relieve a boat of her obligation to loop them3. The words used in the sailing instructions clearly made all marks rounding marks for the purposes of the string test in rule 28.2. However, the protest committee was not required to consider the details of the course sailed by the boats. Its correct reason for reinstating them into their finishing positions, in the absence of a valid protest against them, should have been that, unless otherwise specified in the sailing instructions, a race committee has no power to disqualify a boat without a hearing, or (if she finishes, as defined) score her DNF, if it believes she has not sailed the course.
The narrow focus of the role of the protest committee considering a request for redress was established in WS 80, when the race committee scored Iris DNF because it believed her to have broken rule 28.2 with respect to a course mark, and the protest committee dismissed the resulting request for redress because Iris did not sail the course, entirely through her own fault, and not because of an act or omission of the race committee. In upholding her appeal and reinstating her, US Sailing said that a fundamental principle of the hearing procedure, whether for protests or requests for redress, is that that a hearing must be limited to the particular ‘incident’ referred to in a protest or request for redress as required by rule 62.1.
The race committee acted improperly in scoring Iris DNF when she did finish according to the definition Finish. The race committee could have scored Iris as DNF only for failing to finish correctly (see rule A5). Since Iris crossed the finishing line from the course side, and none of the three exceptions in the definition Finish applied, she should have been recorded as having finished.
A fundamental principle of protest committee procedure is that a hearing must be limited to the particular ‘incident’ alleged in a protest (see rule 61.2(b)) or to the particular incident alleged to be ‘an improper action or omission’ in a request for redress under rule 62.1(a). Although the incident that was the subject of Iris’s request for redress was that she had been incorrectly scored DNF, the protest committee turned to a different incident when it considered whether or not she had failed to sail the course correctly and therefore broken rule 28.1. Since that incident was not the incident alleged in the redress for request, the committee acted improperly.
1 WS 80 2 RYA 1990/7, 2001/12 3 RYA 2000/5: a boat ‘loops’ a mark when her track on leaving the mark crosses her track when approaching it
132 RYA The Racing Rules Explained
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