PART 5
So in RYA 1982/3, the starting signal was made one minute early but the race officer judged it advisable to allow the race to continue. Two boats lodged what purported to be protests against the race committee. The facts were not in dispute. Neither of the two boats delayed her start until the correct time. The protest committee, after a hearing, held that no boat’s score had been made worse by the admitted error, and decided to let the results stand. The two boats’ appeals were dismissed.
A boat cannot protest the race committee; she can seek redress under rule 62.1(a) and must show that, through no fault of her own, her score was, or may have been, made significantly worse by an error of the race committee. The protest committee was correct to have proceeded on the basis that the ‘protests’ were in fact requests for redress.
There was nothing in the appeals to show that the protest committee was wrong to decide that neither boat’s score had, or may have, been made significantly worse by the race officer’s mistake in the timing of the starting signal.
What ranks as a ‘request for redress’?
It is either a claim made by the boat concerned under rule 60.1(b), a request on her behalf made by the race committee under rule 60.2(b), or a request on her behalf by a technical committee under rule 60.4(b).
A request for redress does not have to use that term1 , and if it is a letter from a boat complaining that her score or
place was made worse at no fault of her own by one of the grounds in (a) to (d) of rule 62.1, it should be treated as a request for redress.
In RYA 1989/9, Imperator was the only entry in her class in the series in July. The starts of several classes were combined. There was a prize for the combined results. Imperator finished correctly in her races. The race committee recorded ‘No Race’ for her series. When Imperator received the results the owners wrote immediately complaining that this was incorrect and that Imperator was entitled to her points in these races.
The race committee replied that since only one boat had come to the starting line there was a ‘no race’ situation. After further correspondence Imperator lodged a formal request for redress in October. At the hearing the request for redress was found to be invalid and an extension of the time limit was refused on the grounds that there had been unreasonable delay in requesting redress. At the Class meeting in October, Imperator’s series was declared invalid and the decision to present no prizes reaffirmed. Imperator’s appeal was upheld, including her appeal against the finding of invalidity.
Although the owners’ politely worded letter dated 23rd July did not contain the words “Request for Redress” it in fact met all the requirements for a request for redress, and well within a reasonable time from the receipt of the results. It was therefore valid, and should have been heard when received.
Indeed, a letter may purport to be something else, and still rank as a valid request for redress: nor is it essential for such a letter to spell out exactly how the boat’s score had been adversely, as long as she asserts that it had been. The details are for the hearing. In RYA 2002/1 on a heavy-weather day, the protest committee gave redress to four boats that claimed that they were given insufficient time after being released from the beach to reach the starting area. The redress was the average of the first two races sailed the previous day, when conditions were less onerous.
Another boat, Really Random, lodged the usual form (which was and is headed ‘Protest Form – also for redress and reopening’) on which she had ticked the box marked ‘Request by boat …to reopen hearing’. She asked the protest committee to change the redress granted to the four boats to ‘a more appropriate basis’, as (she asserted) the protest committee had acted incorrectly in some unspecified way in deciding the method of awarding redress in the previous case, and that this had, also in some unspecified way, adversely affected her.
The protest committee, examining the form before starting the hearing, decided that Really Random had not been a party to the earlier hearings, and so was not entitled to ask for a reopening. It then decided that the document might rank as a request for redress, but that there was nothing in the form to indicate that Really Random’s score in a race or series had been, or might be, made significantly worse by some improper action of the earlier protest committee – indeed, it was not clear what was the basis for the request.
1 As in RYA 1982/3, above RYA The Racing Rules Explained 187
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