Some rules at the start

At the Newport Yacht Club Celebration of Spring Lightning Regatta this past weekend, we ended up having a protest hearing after racing on Sunday for an incident at the start.  Briefly, what had happened was that the boat end of the line was incredibly favored making it very advantageous to start right at the boat.  If you were down the line even a few boat lengths you would immediately be behind. 

The protest scenario basically came about as one boat (boat A) tried to squeeze in between the committee boat and the boat to leeward of them (boat B) with somewhere between 20 and 40 seconds to go in the sequence.  A lot of times people can pull this move off and sneak in, but with the boat end of the line as favored as it was, this was a very difficult move.  Boat B, who was trying to close the door on boat A can basically point as high as the wind (but not cross the wind) in order to keep A out, as long as A can pass safely around the committee boat.  There are some great articles going over this very scenario and the rules that apply HERE and another one HERE.

As you may expect from reading those two articles, Boat A was disqualified.  It was deemed that B had full rights to close the door and not allow them to pass between B and the committee boat.  It was determined that Boat A could have tacked and left the committee boat (important to note that the comittee boat was a small whaler with the mast at the very aft of the boat) to port and further that Boat B did not cross past head to wind in trying to shut the door.  Had the committee boat been a large boat with the mast at the bow, the scenario may have changed a bit and the timing of the whole situation may have been more of a factor.  Nonetheless, the moral of the story is to know the rules so that you know how to react to these situations in real time on the water.