PART 2
If a boat does not keep a good lookout, she may fail to do everything reasonably possible to avoid contact, and, if she does not hail if that could have averted a collision, she has not ‘acted to avoid contact’. In WS 107, before the starting signal, Ephesian (S) and Jupa (P), both heavy 10m keelboats, collided with damage, head-to-head. Neither was previously aware of the other, and both were penalised, Ephesian under rule 14. She appealed, asserting that, in the light conditions, she had limited manoeuvrability, and could not have avoided Jupa by changing course or speed. Her appeal was dismissed.
Rule 14 begins ‘A boat shall avoid contact with another boat if reasonably possible.’ This requirement means a boat must do everything that can reasonably be expected of her in the prevailing conditions to avoid contact. This includes keeping a good lookout while sailing in the starting area during the starting sequence, a time when boats are often close to one another and frequently change course.
The protest committee concluded that if either boat had seen the other a collision could have been avoided, even at the last minute, particularly if Ephesian had hailed Jupa when it was clear that Jupa was not changing course to keep clear. Until that moment, rule 14(a) allows a right-of-way boat to delay acting to avoid contact. It follows that at that moment she must begin to act in an effort to avoid contact. The word ‘act’ is not restricted to changing course or speed. Hailing was an action that Ephesian could and should have taken1
.
It should be noted that rule 5 of the IRPCAS requires all boats to keep ‘a proper lookout by sight and hearing’. That rule does not apply directly to boats that are racing, any more than any other IRPCAS rule. The requirement for boats racing to keep a good lookout is not explicit in the racing rules: it is a not-immediately-obvious implication of rule 14, to be found only in the cases. Since this is an important point, and since neither the World Sailing casebook nor textbooks like this one are the bedside reading of every competitor, there is a good argument for making it an explicit requirement in the rules, although continued compliance could be inconveniently difficult, not to say impossible, in some modern designs of centreboards with sprit-rigged spinnakers, and in single-handed oceanic racing.
What is damage? WS 19 tells us (or, rather, doesn’t tell us).
It is not possible to define ‘damage’ comprehensively, but one current English dictionary says ‘harm . . . impairing the value or usefulness of something.’
This definition suggests questions to consider. Examples are: 1. Was the current market value of any part of the boat, or of the boat as a whole, diminished? 2. Was any item of the boat or her equipment made less functional?
RYA 2001/3 is rather more helpful. ‘Damage includes something that a prudent owner would repair promptly.’
So under either test, a gouge to a newly varnished wooden hull may well be damage, whereas the umpteenth wound to an elderly Topper hull would probably not be. RYA 2001/3 makes a further point: ‘Damage includes damage a boat causes to herself.’ So the fact that damage is incurred only by the right-of-way boat that fails to avoid avoidable contact will not preclude penalisation under rule 14.
RYA 2008/3 goes further. Iris wrongly denied Daffodil mark-room, and Daffodil, in avoiding Iris, crashed into Thetis, damaging her. ‘In a protest, a right-of-way boat or one entitled to room or mark-room may be penalised under rule 14 even if the damage or injury referred to in rule 14(b) is incurred only by a third boat that is not a party to the hearing, if it is a consequence of the original breach of a rule of Part 2 by one of the parties.’
The logical consequence of this would seem to be that penalisation under rule 14 is possible if damage is caused to a vessel not racing, or even a jetty or shore installation. Likewise, the injury may be to a person on a vessel not racing, or a spectator on the shore – as long as there is a causal link with the original failure to keep clear.
‘Injury’ in the racing rules refers only to bodily injury to a person, and ‘damage’ is limited to physical damage to a boat or her equipment2
.’ ‘Damage’ (or ‘injury3 applicable to the several occasions when those terms arise in the rules.
1 SC 71 makes the same point as concerns keeping a good lookout, as does WS 26: ‘All boats, whether or not holding right of way, should keep a lookout, particularly when approaching a mark.’ This World Sailing case has moved subtly from requiring a lookout to be kept ‘at all times’. 2 WS 110: I wonder whether an injury to the ship’s cat, or to the swan in the reeds I have crashed into, might also count. 3 ibid
48 RYA The Racing Rules Explained ’) to a boat’s finishing position or prospects thereof are not
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