PART 4 Rule 46 PERSON IN CHARGE
A boat shall have on board a person in charge designated by the member or organization that entered the boat. See rule 75.
This rule rarely needs conscious compliance. It may apply by implication to a person on whom the sailing instructions impose responsibilities as the ‘skipper1
’. It is otherwise a procedural rule, to establish who is
responsible when there is an issue or a protest under rule 78.1, concerning the maintenance of the boat to comply with her class rules and to be duly certified and rated; and who is to certify under rule 78.2 that a valid measurement, rating or insurance certificate that cannot be produced at entry and that it will be produced, on pain of disqualification from the whole event. Rule 46 creates only responsibilities, not rights. By requiring there to be person in charge while racing, this facilitates a link between not keeping a boat in class rules between events, and racing in such a condition. Most rules are not concerned with the identity of individuals, but rule 78 needs to know who might be summoned to a rule 69.2 hearing in a serious case. Rule 78.1 assumes that the owner will be a person in charge, but that there may be others.
World Sailing Offshore Special Regulations give this rule teeth by making the person in charge responsibe for safety.
Rule 46 says that the person in charge need not be the person who enters the boat, although in practice they will often be one and the same.
Cases on rule 46 pay more attention to what rule 46 does not say than to what it does say. In particular, the identity of the person steering the boat is irrelevant unless the class rules, notice of race or sailing instructions say otherwise2
. In a single-handed boat, the issue is meaningless. In a dinghy, there is no reason why the helming cannot be shared by the persons on board. In larger keelboats, the helmsman or helmswoman is just one of the afterguard, it is a duty that is rotated in longer races, and the tactician and owner may have more influence on the conduct of the race. ‘It is the boat that is entered in the race (see Rule 75.1) and, unless otherwise specifically provided in the class rules, notice of the race or sailing instructions…it is a matter for the owner or other person in charge of her to decide who steers her at any time, provided that rule 46 is not broken3
.’
RYA 1990/2 is to the same effect, and continues with a worked-out example. Question
A boat belonging to A.B. was entered in a five race series. The sailing instructions said that ‘points are attributed to the helmsman, not the boat’. The boat was entered with C.D. listed as helmsman on the entry form. C.D. sailed as helmsman and finished in three races. A.B. sailed as helmsman in two races and did not finish either race. How should this be scored? Was any rule broken?
Answer
No rule was broken at any time, since there is no racing rule that addresses itself to the identity of the person helming a boat. Nor was the sailing instruction broken. The only reasonable interpretation of the sailing instruction is that the points won by a boat in a race will be re-attributed to the helmsman of that boat, in that race. In a series, the winner will be the helmsman with the lowest (or best) attributed total points score. Awards will not be made to boats. So A.B. should score points for DNC in three races, and DNF in two races. C.D. should score finishing points in three races and DNC in two races.
So when a boat has, for example, been helmed by three different people during a series in which points are awarded to the helmsman, the results sheet should then show three different entries, each under the name of one of the people but with the same sail number. The score for any one race is attributed to the appropriate entry in the name of that person, sailing that boat, and the other two entries of boat plus helmsman are scored DNC for that race.
If it is intended to restrict this further, the notice of race and the sailing instructions need to say: ‘A competitor shall be in charge of one boat only during the series’ or ‘Only one set of results per boat shall count for a series result.’
1 A term that is not used in the Racing Rules of Sailing 2 It is common in events that require a high non-professional crew composition to prohibit a ‘professional’ from helming, either at all or at certain
critical times. 3 WS 40. It is not clear how rule 46 could be broken in any meaningful way in this context.
164 RYA The Racing Rules Explained
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