Greetings CMYC members
Today was another anti-cyclonic day typical of the last few weeks, although the wind pressure was nice it was rather wayward in direction giving lots of passing lanes for those behind, but frustrating for those who were leading. Paddy as RO set a 2 lap triangle course which worked very well and we thought the fleet was fairly close most of the heats. I have no humorous comments to make because everyone was on exemplary behaviour and we didn’t see any unexonerated exonerations due to be exonerated but remaining unexonerated so the exoneration facet of todays sailing was excellent. Congratulations to the podiumstepupomites Cliff, Dayele and Al, these are the 3 I suspected would be raised up.
As assistant and watching the starts, I did see a few dubious tactics which I am quite sure some of the perpetrators and victims were unaware of, therefore edification shall ensue. First let me describe the incidents. It is about 5-10 seconds before the start signal, several boats are approaching the starboard end mark on the layline, some may be overlapped to leeward, some may be following clear astern, but they were all approaching the mark closehauled on the layline.
Usually 1 or 2 boats would be hovering to the course side and outside the starboard mark then reach into the start mark with inside overlap on the layline boats and place themselves in a great starting position right on the line.
Now this would be fine at every other mark except the start mark, why…..because….. in the preamble to SECTION C – AT MARKS AND OBSTRUCTIONS we have the italicised fine print which states. Section C rules do not apply at a starting mark surrounded by navigable water or at its anchor line from the time boats are approaching them to start until they have passed them.
So what does this mean?
- During the 2 minute prestart period mark room rules apply but onlyuntil boats are approaching them to start.
- In this scenario, i.e. boats closehauled to start, the boats that reach in are windward to those on the layline, therefore rule 11 applies;When boats are on the same tack and overlapped, a windward boat shall keep clear of a leeward boat.Therefore rule 18 is turned off so no mark room is available for the reaching boats.
Cheers. Tom A. SM