PART 6
The rule is commonly broken without enforcement. Boats arrive at major events without national letters, or with a new sail without numbers (other perhaps than a single digit), or with a spinnaker borrowed from a friend whose sail number is defaced, and with the boat’s sail number hand-drawn and so hardly legible. Race committees give permission, and protest committees rarely want to make an issue of this if the race committee does not want to. When issues arise, protest committees will often fall back on rule G4, which permit it to choose between disqualification and a warning and time to comply for breaking Appendix G. This is less of a panacea than it appears: Appendix G’s requirements concerning identification on sails applies directly only to World Sailing international classes. However, rule G2 says that other boats shall comply with the rules of their national authority or class association. There does not appear to be any mechanism for a non-World Sailing class to allow a penalty other than disqualification for breach of class rules concerning identification on sails, and so only a sailing instruction putting the protest committee in the same position concerning both World Sailing and non-World Sailing classes will allow for disqualification to be avoided.
Added to this, sailing instructions cannot directly change class rules, as stated in rule 87, unless this is provided for in the class rules, or the class has given written permission. So when a class rule concerning sails, even for a World Sailing class, does not concern identification, no penalty other than disqualification is available to a protest committee unless the sailing instructions say so, varying rule 64.1 for breaches of class rules or rule 78. An example might be sail measurement and stamping requirements.
Rule 78 78.1 COMPLIANCE WITH CLASS RULES; CERTIFICATES
While a boat is racing, her owner and any other person in charge shall ensure that the boat is maintained to comply with her class rules and that her measurement or rating certificate, if any, remains valid. In addition, the boat shall also comply at other times specified in the class rules, the notice of race or the sailing instructions.
78.2
When a rule requires a valid certificate to be produced or its existence verified before a boat races, and this cannot be done, the boat may race provided that the race committee receives a statement signed by the person in charge that a valid certificate exists. The boat shall produce the certificate or arrange for its existence to be verified by the race committee. The penalty for breaking this rule is disqualification without a hearing from all races of the event.
Naturally, a boat must comply with her class rules while racing. The last sentence of rule 78.1 improves enforceability. When there is a stated time for the boat to be compliant with her class rules, she can then be protested by the Technical Committee if she fails inspection at or after than time. To enforce this, the notice of race needs to state a pre-race compliance deadline (see K8.2 of the Notice of Race Guide), and a clause in the sailing instructions can authorise on-the-water and post race checks (see L20 of the Sailing Instructions Guide).
Note that rule 60.4(2) requires a Technical Committee to protest a boat when it decides that she does not comply with class rules. I think that in practice an equipment inspector will first give a boat the chance to remedy non-compliance detected in pre-race inspection, before resorting to a protest. That would be helped if the compliance deadline in K8.2 is the expected end of the pre-race inspection time, the notice of race for instance saying that boats shall be ready for inspection or measurement by (date & time#1) and shall be compliant with rule 78.1 by (date & time#2).
RYA The Racing Rules Explained 233
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