Club News

PALM BEACH GARDENS MODEL YACHT SQUADRON

AMERICAN MODEL YACHTING ASSOCIATION CLUB #94

Club News

Jib Sheet

February 12, 2012

Today was quite windy with gust approaching 16 knts as a result the Micro Magics did not sail and there were about 9 Solings and 3 EC12's. As usual the results will be posted on the web site www.PBGMYS by the class secretary Al Stall. Thank you Al There was a mishap on the lake which I didn't see but I was told that Bill Newman's boat sunk. He has it "triangulated" for a recovery atempt. Let's hope for the best.

The Fall Sailing series is over and the results are published on the www.PBGMYS.com web site by class. Trophies will be awarded at a ceremony that we will have in a couple of months (to be announced).

Next Weekend February 18-19 EC12 Valentine Regatta, RD Jon Luscomb . Jon looks like there are many helpers and I understand there will be some beer cooked dogs, is that right??? and of course the infamous "Coney Island Chilie Dog" prepared by Jon himself :))))) Pizza will also be on the agenda and "delivered" :)

March 24-25th EC 12 Regatta St Petersburg followed by Orlando April 21-22 and Jacksonville May 19-20th

See you on the pond

Ed Gelina

YES it was BLOWIN!

The weather was otherwise cool but a beautiful day.

Bill Koch and the gallery watched as his boat slowly sink out in front at the Coral buoy next to #1-#2

Chester lost a Sail Servo, water in the boat.

Bill Newman went back to his house twice, broken shruds then found on his other boat the antenna on his AM - RX broken.

I had water in the boat which caused the sail servo to stop working. I removed all electrical parts, RX Sail Servo, placed the RX over a lamp bulb, removed the bottom of the servo and tied it over the bulb about 3 hours. This AM the servo worked fine.

Bill Koch, Ben, my friend Joel, Bill Parker and I met this AM at the pond to determine where to start looking for his "Titanic".

Bill Newman loaned his JON boat and they draggged my "Ninja" grappling hook over the area. Unbelievable, they picked up his boat on the 2nd pass. Yes it was filled with water but no damage was found.

I had them drag for Ed Polskey's Soling. After 1/2 hour NO LUCK!

We moved the North Red corner buoy back in line with the Yellow so a proper gate exsts and replaced the South Corner faded buoy with a larger bright Pink Neon. Gates on both ends of the course.

Moral of the story. When winds get above 12 knots, sail at your own peril understanding that Ka Ka will occur!

Next time we'll take 5 minutes after every 2 races to drain bilges.

Later, Roger

ANY GAME WORTH PLAYING NEEDS TO BE PLAYED RIGHT

For those of you who are serious racers, there was a very important article about the racing rules that appeared in Sailing Scuttlebutt, issue #3302. The article was written by Peter Wilson, a well known and respected Senior Judge and Umpire and if you haven''t read it, you should.

From time to time, UK-Halsey Sailmakers publishes articles on the racing rules written by Rob Overton. Rob is the current Chairman of the US Sailing Racing Rules Committee, an International Umpire, a US Senior Judge and a member of the Florida Appeals Committee.

We are pleased to publish Rob''s thoughts on Peter''s article.

In Scuttlebutt #3302 Peter Wilson writes an interesting article, "Is the ''Fundamental
Principle'' Still Relevant?" The Fundamental Principle (which is on the page
facing Rule 1 in the Racing Rules of Sailing) says "Competitors in the sport
of sailing are governed by a body of rules that they are expected to follow and
enforce. A fundamental principle of sportsmanship is that when competitors break
a rule they will promptly take a penalty, which may be to retire."

It''s the last sentence that Peter addresses in his article. He points out that this principle seems to apply less and less, these days, and I think most of us would agree with him. Competitors rarely protest, or, if they''re wrong, take voluntary penalties, even for blatant fouls.

This lack of action is, as Peter points out, bad for the sport – it discourages people from learning the rules and frustrates those who abide by the rules when they see others behaving badly on the race course. It''s also bad for kids to come to the conclusion (or be taught by their coaches) that it''s OK to cheat.

Peter proposed some ideas about what to do to get sailors to respect and follow the Fundamental Principle, but I think there''s only one solution: we need to change the culture of competitive sailing. That means we should, as a group, encourage valid protests, strongly encourage sailors to take voluntary penalties, and improve the protest process so it is less rigorous for the protestor and more consistent in the outcome. And we should never encourage or allow our kids, our coaches or our friends to break rules without taking a penalty.

Here are six specific actions we can take:
1. We can all make sure we know the rules of Part 2 of the RRS (When Boats Meet). To follow the Fundamental Principal, we all have to know, while we''re racing, what rules apply and whether our boat and the boats around us are obeying them. One big reason for the lack of both protests and penalty turns is that the people involved in incidents are not sure whether they''re right or wrong. As the number of protests declines, the apparent need to know the rules reduces. This is a downward spiral that we can reverse simply by spending a little time reading the six pages of Part 2 and figuring out how those rules apply as we sail the course.

If you''re interested in learning more about the rules, I suggest you look at the UK-Halsey Rules Quiz. You might also look through the Team Race Call Book on the ISAF website (http://sailing.org). Although that book is about team racing, almost all the calls apply to situations that occur in fleet racing, as well – and when a Call uses any special team-race rule, it warns you at the top of the Call by referencing the appropriate rule from Appendix D.

2. We can act on what we believe. We can try to sail by the rules, and when we foul, we can do our turns. When a boat fouls us, we can protest and file that protest whether or not we beat that boat in the race. When we see an egregious foul, we can protest the boat that did it, even if we weren''t involved in the incident (making sure we immediately hail "protest" if we''re close enough for the other boats to hear it, and flying a protest flag if required to do so.) When a friend tells a story at the bar about some incident on the racecourse, we can ask, "So, why didn''t you do your turns?" Or, "Why didn''t you protest?" Or even, "If you saw something that bad, why didn''t you protest, even though you weren''t involved in the incident?"

I''ve got to say, here, that I''m not sure what to do about minor and incidental contact. Even though I say we should protest when we''re fouled, I admit that many times, while sailing Lasers, I''ve felt the sail of the boat to windward of me brush against my life jacket, or come in to a leeward mark in light air with 8 or 10 boats rafted up, and never even considered protesting. So I guess I''m saying we should use good judgment, but when we see the kind of behavior that indicates a total disrespect for the rules, we should take action against the perpetrators.

3. We can stop regatta organizers from discouraging protests. When a Principal Race Officer gets up at the skippers'' meeting and says "We don''t want any protests, here," we should raise our hands to interrupt politely and suggest that what he really meant to say was "Do your turns, and protest those who foul and don''t spin."

As part of this action, we need to encourage regatta organizers to appoint protest committees in advance. If judges are not actually at the event, they should be asked to stay on standby, and if they get a call from the event indicating there''s a protest to be heard, they should be ready to get to the venue on the double. If there are simply no judges available, the organizers ought to select from each fleet in the regatta a couple of competitors who are known to be savy to the rules, and ask them to serve for protests not involving their fleets.

4. We can improve training for judges. There are excellent judge seminars conducted by US SAILING, and I encourage sailors and judges alike to attend one. But the United States is a big country and there''s a limit to how many of these seminars US SAILING can put on. Local and national protest committee chairmen could present judge seminars at their clubs or at regattas, at least once every season, to help other judges standardize procedures and interpretations of the rules. Such seminars should include mock protest hearings so that judges and prospective judges can get hands-on experience applying the rules.

Whenever possible, we need to get judges out on the water. This will help them make better decisions even if they haven''t witnessed an incident because they''ll have a better sense of how the boats were handled and how they performed in the existing conditions. Moreover, competitors are more likely to protest fouls if they know that there are judges who may have seen the incident and be able to testify about it.

5. We can make it easier to take a penalty, and easier to protest boats that don''t do so when they should. We definitely should experiment with using a single-turn instead of two-turn penalty, even for fouls inside the zones. (Please send the results of such experiments to rules@ussailing.org.) To make protests easier, we should be sure protest forms are readily available, tell sailors at the skippers'' meeting where to submit them, and maybe remove some of the technical requirements for protesting. One idea in this direction is, don''t apply rule 61.1(a) (hail and flag requirements) to third-party protests, as long as the third-party protest is made as soon as it''s clear that neither boat in the incident is taking a penalty. Then, if somebody sees a clear foul and nobody spins, it''s not too late for him to protest. (This would require a sailing instruction, or a change in the RRS.) Maybe we should reconsider the pre-1997 rule that allowed third-party protests when there was contact and it became clear later that neither party was filing a valid protest. Under that rule, once the protest committee established that there was contact, both boats involved were disqualified, regardless of who was right or wrong in the original incident.

6. We can make protest hearings sooner, faster and surer.
By "sooner" I mean the hearings should be held immediately after racing. As time goes by, a protestor''s resolve frequently wanes, and the protest never gets files. Or, as the parties discuss the incident with their crews and friends, their recollections begin to change, not because they''re trying to cheat but because that''s human nature. Every little change in the story increases the likelihood that the protest committee will get the answer wrong, and every time they get the answer wrong decreases the chance that people will protest in the future.

Why do we need to wait for 2 hours after the boats are ashore before starting hearings – why don''t we instead hear protests as soon as the forms are submitted and the parties have a chance to organize their thoughts? Better yet, why not meet the parties on the dock when they arrive, or even have the mark-boat pick up representatives from the boats involved, before they get home? Then the protest hearing could begin almost immediately. If there is additional evidence the parties or the protest committee think they need, then fine – adjourn the hearing while they get the witnesses they need. But at least get the process started before "story drift" makes it impossible to figure out what happened on the water.

By "faster", I mean arbitration should be used as much as possible, and that clubs should consider using expedited protest committee procedures at their local events. In college sailing, protests are fast, efficient, and in my mind at least, more likely to get the right answer, than the usual protest hearings conducted under rule 63. Many college judges limit presentation of evidence to a couple of minutes. As soon as they''ve taken the stories of the parties, they decide what the points of disagreement are and only allow questions and evidence on those disputed points. They ban testimony from crew members of parties to the hearing, unless those crew members saw the incident from a substantially different point of view from that of their skipper. (Note: These changes require a sailing instruction similar to ICSA Procedural Rule 35: "The Protest Committee shall take such evidence as it considers necessary to determine the facts of an incident and base its decision on them (Changes RRS 63.6).")

And by "surer", I mean we should discuss and agree upon basic guidelines on how protests should be decided. Prospective judges, whether certified or not, should read the US SAILING Judges Manual. Protest procedures and principles should be discussed at local rules seminars and judge seminars, with mock protests, questions and answers if possible.

If we do these things, maybe we can put the Fundamental Principle back into sailboat racing.