BASIC PRINCIPLES Basic Principles SPORTSMANSHIP AND THE RULES


Competitors in the sport of sailing are governed by a body of rules that they are expected to follow and enforce. A fundamental principle of sportsmanship is that when competitors break a rule they will promptly take a penalty, which may be to retire.


ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY Participants are encouraged to minimize any adverse environmental impact of the sport of sailing.


The Basic Principles are not rules, as they are not listed in the definition Rule. No protest can be directly brought for breaking them, since a protest is defined as an allegation that a boat has breaking a rule. However, they lead to other rules under which protests are possible.


The Environmental Responsibility principle is augmented by rule 55, Trash Disposal, which says that trash is not intentionally to be put in the water. The title page of World Sailing’s own print of the Racing Rules of Sailing includes a statement that World Sailing ‘promotes and supports the protection of the environment in all sailing competitions and related activities throughout the world’. However, rule 55 can be changed by sailing instructions, for instance to allow spinnaker wool bands to fall in the sea, or to allow the jettisoning of degradable waste in oceanic races. The rule can be deleted completely. Sailing instructions sometimes say that competitors are not allowed to protest for putting trash in the water, the right to protest being reserved to race committees and protest committees. It is curious that a Basic Principle should be allowed in practice to be rather toothless.


The Basic Principle, Sportsmanship and the Rules, which says that a boat must take a penalty when a rule is broken, creates a direct link to rule 2, Fair Sailing, which requires competition ‘in compliance with recognised principles of sportsmanship and fair play’, in default of which protests and penalisation are possible. For example, in WS 65, it was held that a boat that knows she has broken rule 30.4, Black Flag Rule, is obliged to retire promptly. When she does not do so, and then deliberately hinders another boat in the race, she commits a breach of sportsmanship and, therefore, of rule 2. Separately, her helmsman will have broken rule 69.1(a).


Sometimes, retirement is specified to be the only penalty a boat can take, since her breach caused injury or serious damage or gained her a significant advantage1


. When a boat does retire in these circumstances, it


may be that she did so not because of any intention to retire, but simply because damage to herself precluded continuing to race. In WS 99, there was contact between S and P that resulted in serious damage to both. Both boats retired, and, as is not uncommon, both were disqualified in the resulting protest. On appeal, S was exonerated, since only P was at fault, but P’s disqualification was also reversed, since she had promptly retired, albeit involuntarily. When a boat retires as required by rule 44.1, whether out of choice or necessity, she cannot then be penalised further2


.


The obligation to take a penalty does not depend on whether another boat in the incident is protesting. In RYA 1990/8, as a result of an incident between two Lasers, a third boat, L, protested P, alleging that P crossed S, causing the latter to bear away vigorously to avoid a hull-to-hull collision. S’s bow, she alleged, hit P’s mainsheet. In the protest hearing, P’s helmsman was specifically asked by the chairman of the protest committee if he had broken a rule, known that he had done so, and yet neither retired nor taken a penalty. His reply was a simple ‘Yes’. The protest committee found that there had been no contact, but that S had had to bear away to avoid P. It disqualified P under rule 10. P appealed on the grounds that S, the alleged victim of the alleged infringement, had chosen not to protest. The RYA not only dismissed the appeal but also added a breach of rule 2 to P’s crime-sheet, and upgraded the disqualification to one that could not be excluded from her series score.


1 See rule 44.1(b), Penalties at the Time of an Incident: Taking a Penalty 2 See WS 107 for a further example. The boat is scored RET or possibly DNF.


18 RYA The Racing Rules Explained


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