PART 3
Rule 31 applies when a boat touches a course mark she is rounding as required. It ends the leg she was on and begins the next leg. It will not apply if, just after starting on a typical trapezoid course, she touches the leeward mark that has been laid to windward of the starting line. That mark does not begin or end the leg she is currently on, which is the leg from the starting line to the windward mark. It will not be her next mark until she has rounded the windward mark – indeed, if her course is ‘outer loop’, it will never be a mark of her course. A mark that is a ‘passing mark’ to keep boats clear of an area is one that ‘bounds’ a leg.
A boat must not, while racing, touch a finishing mark before she finishes when the finishing mark will end the leg of the course she is on. Therefore, before she is on the final leg, she can touch a finishing mark, unless it is separately a course mark for her on the leg she is on, such as a mark of a start and finish line that must be passed through at the end of each lap.
A boat must not touch a finishing mark after finishing while she is still racing, which is until, after finishing, she clears the finishing line and marks. So if a boat touches a finishing mark just after cutting the finishing line, she now has to take a turn penalty and return to the pre-finish side of the line and cross the line again. WS 127 explains.
A boat clears the finishing line and marks when the following two conditions are met: no part of her hull, crew or equipment is on the line, and no finishing mark is influencing her choice of course. For example, a boat that clears the finishing line and then continues to sail toward a finishing mark, where current sets her into the mark, is still racing and has broken rule 31. However, a boat that crosses the finishing line, and sails to a position at which no finishing mark is influencing her choice of course, is no longer racing. If, later, she hits a finishing mark, she does not break rule 31.
WS 58, as discussed under rule 28.2, says that a buoy laid as an intended limit mark on the post-course side of the finishing line does not end or bound the last leg of the course. Since the ‘end or bound’ requirement appears in both rule 28.2 and rule 31, it follows that such a ‘mark’ can also be touched. However that case says that a finishing line limit mark has a required side for a boat when it is laid on the finishing line or its course side, presumably because it bounds the last leg, and therefore it must not be touched.
The rule forbids touching a starting mark before starting. This does not mean that a committee boat (or any starting mark) can be touched immediately after starting, because such marks begin or bound the first leg of the course the boat is now on.
It is unclear (to me, at least) whether it may sometimes be possible to touch the committee boat or buoys of a starting line before starting without breaking rule 31. You must not touch a starting mark before starting – but the definition Mark says that a mark is an object the sailing instructions require a boat to leave on a specified side – and rule 28.2 says that a starting mark does not have a required side for a boat until she is approaching it to start. So in fact, it is argued, those objects are not in fact marks until near the starting signal.
The alternative view is that you must not touch the committee boat and starting marks at any time from the preparatory signal (when a boat is now racing) until the starting signal. The reason is that the definition Mark is to be read as meaning that a mark is an object the sailing instructions require a boat to leave on a specified side at some time in the race. So the leeward ‘mark’ buoy you meet shortly after starting IS a mark. You can only touch it because it is a mark that does not begin, bound or end the leg you are on, as stated in rule 31. The rule clearly says that a starting mark is not to be touched before starting. The starting marks will acquire a required side when approaching the line to start, and therefore they are always marks, and are not to be touched while racing and before starting. (If one is touched before approaching the line to start, a turn penalty taken promptly as required will rarely interfere with a boat’s starting strategy.)
RYA The Racing Rules Explained 143
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