PART 5 Decisions on Redress
Most decisions to award redress will flow naturally from the balance of the evidence in the hearing. However, when a boat is contesting a decision of the race committee, especially an OCS score, it is the competitor that has to prove that the race committee made a mistake, and, in effect, beyond a reasonable doubt. The race officer is the best person to ‘call the line’, and when he can show that the race committee procedures for recording OCS boats was reliable, that will usually prevail over even the most plausible contention from the boat that she was on the pre-course side of the starting line at all material times1
. The competitor’s task may be a little easier when the
boat admits to having been OCS, but claims that she realised this, returned and started. It is possible that the race committee will not have seen her return because of other boats obscuring its view, and she may be able to convince the protest committee that she did return2
.
On the other hand, when redress is sought because of an alleged ambiguity in the sailing instructions3 display of the course4
the competitor is entitled to any benefit of the doubt.
When a protest committee decides that redress is due, it has a wide range of options from which to choose the most appropriate redress. The primary task is to compensate the requester for her worsened score, but the redress must also be as fair as possible for all boats affected. Other boats can be affected in two ways. They may be boats which were affected by the same issue as affected the requester, but they may not have asked for redress, and now find themselves the recipients of a pleasant unrequested surprise. On the other hand, they may be boats that were unaffected by the issue giving rise to redress, and that now find that the redress given to one or more boat has worsened their own positions relative to those boats. Sometimes, the redress that is as fair as possible for all boats affected may not be particularly favourable for the requester6
.
Despite this, many redress issues that are in effect the correction of mistakes will not in fact require the impact on other boats to be considered. For example, Daffodil is scored OCS. She did not return when a recall signal was made. She asks for redress, makes out a convincing case that she was not OCS, and is therefore simply reinstated into her finishing position. Iris is scored DNF because the race committee thinks she did not sail the course. She asks for redress because she DID finish as defined, and has not been protested for not sailing the course (which she would in any case deny). Again, she is reinstated into her finishing position. Thetis is caught on the course side of the starting line in the last minute of a Black Flag start that is then recalled. The race committee, by mistake, does not display her sail number, but, as she then sailed in the restart of the race, it scores her DNE. The fact that she broke rule 30.4 is not contested (or is not sustained if it is contested), and so redress corrects her score to the one that would have applied had her sail number been displayed and she had not taken part in the restart, namely a ‘vanilla’ BFD7
.
That last example is a reminder that redress is not intended to be a reward for the competitor or a punishment for the race committee. It is compensation: it is, as far as possible, the putting of the boat into the position that would have applied if the incident giving rise to redress had not happened. With a wrongful OCS or DNF, that is easily determined. But when Daffodil IS OCS, and does not return, and the race committee then removes flag X too early, the question in any subsequent request for redress by Daffodil against an OCS score is what Daffodil would have done if the X flag had not been removed early. RYA 2006/2 considers this:
If the protest committee is satisfied that the boat would have returned if flag X had been displayed for longer, it should award redress. Appropriate redress would be to reinstate her in the race and add to her finishing time the estimated time for the boat to sail back to the start line and then return to the point at which she turned back, which, in this case, is unlikely to be less than two minutes. Reinstating the boat in her actual finishing position will be wrong as it will not be equitable to all boats, as required by rule 64.2. If the protest committee is not satisfied that the boat would have turned back if flag X had been displayed for longer, redress should be refused.
or in the , or when inadequate race committee equipment results in a loss of places by a competitor5 ,
1 WS 136, RYA 1994/8 2 SC 97 3 RYA 1984/2 4 RYA 2008/2 5 RYA 1989/10: surplus anchor line floated free, and a boat caught it, dragging the mark onto her. 6 RYA 1994/3 7 WS 96
212 RYA The Racing Rules Explained
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