J24 Blog

During the second race last Tuesday we had another incident rounding a mark where a boat called foul on us. Approaching the leeward mark we noticed that two boats rounding ahead were stalled at the mark and there was enough room to pass between them and the mark. I called for room, although I’m now sure we weren’t entitled to room. It was not an attempt at deception, just a lack of real experience with the rules during mark roundings. Significantly, neither of the other boats contested or refused my request.

We came through the gap between the leeward mark and the two boats and drifted a bit due to the course being above close hauled. As soon as we could we tacked and completed our rounding. We neither hit the mark nor the other boats, but one of them did call a foul on us.

Again we had the benefit of hindsight in the form of gps tracks. In the following animation we are the blue boat and the boat that called foul on us is the green boat. I’ve left another (yellow) boat in the animation to help indicate the leeward mark location, which is an educated guess. The red circle is roughly the two boat length circle (16 meters). What this animation shows is that we were not entitled to room:

[kml_flashembed movie="wp-content/uploads/2007/06/rounding.swf" height="460" width="460" play="false" /]

In this situation rule 18.2 applies:

18.2 Giving Room; Keeping Clear
(c) NOT OVERLAPPED AT THE ZONE
If a boat was clear ahead at the time she reached the two-length zone, the boat clear astern shall thereafter keep clear. If the boat clear astern becomes overlapped outside the other boat, she shall also give the inside boat room. If the boat clear astern becomes overlapped inside the other boat, she is not entitled to room. If the
boat that was clear ahead passes head to wind, rule 18.2(c) no longer applies and remains inapplicable.

So it’s pretty obvious that we rounded inside of the other boats but were not entitled to room. Here is what Dave Perry has to say about inside rounding when not entitled to room, taken from Understanding the Racing Rules of Sailing (p.174). He first poses the question and then follows with his answer:

“Now I understand when I can and cannot be entitled to ‘room,’ but what if an outside boat leaves enough space between her and the mark; is it a foul to sneak in there?”

Absolutely not, as long as you don’t hit the mark or the outside boat or force the outside boat to change course to avoid hitting you. US SAILING Appeal 5 is clear: “When a boat voluntarily or unintentionally makes room available to another boat that, under the rules, has no right to that room and makes no claim to it, that other boat may take advantage, at her own risk, of the room so given. In that case, she breaks no rule.”

From the other drivers comments it seems that the room was left to us voluntarily:

We were inside of irrational, and they owed us room, we were about to turn into the mark and round, thus effectively shutting the door on you, but your hail and the speed you were carrying into the mark prevented me from turning, in other words, I didn’t turn in order to avoid hitting you, or having you hit me.

Kevin should have hailed you, “You have no rights, don’t go in there”and then I should have turned as I was planning on doing.

I was pretty close to the mark, and we probably would have collided had I turned.

If the other driver had wanted to shut the door on us, not only was he entitled to, but he wouldn’t have had to give us room to keep clear.

18.2 Giving Room; Keeping Clear
(d) CHANGING COURSE TO ROUND OR PASS
When after the starting signal rule 18 applies between two boats
and the right-of-way boat is changing course to round or pass a
mark, rule 16 does not apply between her and the other boat.

Rule 16 states:

16 CHANGING COURSE
16.1 When a right-of-way boat changes course, she shall give the other boat room to keep clear.

According to Dave Dellenbaugh in Speed and Smarts (No. 92, p.16), rule 18.2(d) is the only exception to rule 16 (Changing Course):

Shutting the door
Two boats on port tack approach a leeward mark. When Boat A enters the two-length zone, she is clear ahead of Boat B, so B must keep clear during the rounding. However, if A swings wide, B may try to sneak between A and the mark. A’s typical response is to turn sharply to ‘close the door.’ But if rule 16 applied, A would be very limited in her ability to do this. Rule 18.2d makes it clear that A is not limited in this way.

So in this leeward mark rounding, the outside boat had rights to steer any course she desired, and we needed to keep clear. She didn’t even need to give us room to keep clear. The burden was on us to get out of the way. Under rule 14, the other boat needed to avoid contact with us, but only to a point:

14 AVOIDING CONTACT
A boat shall avoid contact with another boat if reasonably possible. However, a right-of-way boat or one entitled to room
(a) need not act to avoid contact until it is clear that the other boat is not keeping clear or giving room, and
(b) shall not be penalized under this rule unless there is contact that causes damage or injury.

Under rule 14(b), the other boat would not have been penalized unless there was damage or injury. A question remains. Can there have been a foul if there was no contact? This should be obvious but I wanted to track down the rule that applied specifically to this question. The answer is yes, of course. The burdened boat is required to “keep clear”, which is distinct from “avoid contact.” ISAF case 88 states that “A boat may avoid contact and yet fail to keep clear.” Case 88 involves a rule 10 protest but applies in this case as well:

Rule 10 required P to ‘keep clear’ of S. ‘Keep clear’ means something more than ‘avoid contact’; otherwise the rule would contain those or similar words. Therefore, the fact that the boats did not collide does not necessarily establish that P kept clear.

So there you have it. A collision and subsequent protest were avoided due to the good graces of the other boat. If the stakes had been higher we most certainly would have been protested, and in the end we had no right to stick our nose in there. We can chalk it up to a learning experience, motivation to hit the books and study up on rule 18, and in the end, another installment of “time on the water.”