Overtaking the p?ss

[scottie]

Earlier this year both boats 37 ft approx on starboard reach along the shore south of inchmarnock Lochfyne it's a clean shore at this point Leading boat protects their wind to stop overtaking boat taking weather (shore) side after several tries the overtaking boat pushes through and then immediately calls for water.

Suspect legal but is it fair sailing

Thoughts please!

 

[lpdsn]

Earlier this year both boats 37 ft approx on starboard reach along the shore south of inchmarnock Lochfyne it's a clean shore at this point Leading boat protects their wind to stop overtaking boat taking weather (shore) side after several tries the overtaking boat pushes through and then immediately calls for water.

Suspect legal but is it fair sailing

Thoughts please!

The rule with a continuing obstruction is that you must have sufficient room to enter before gaining an overlap, which if you immediately call for room you obviously haven't. If he entered then really did immediately call for room then you can protest him. It'll come down to a debate about timing.

However, a lot will also depend upon what you did. He has no obligation to anticipate you luffing him, so if he had room when he gained the overlap, then you luffed him, then he called for water, then you've not got a case.

Of course, if he was never close to an obstruction then that's unfair sailing.

You'd need to add a lot more facts to get a definitive answer.

 

[flaming]

On a phone so don't have rules handy to quote verbatim. But look up rule 19, which is the one that deals with this.

It says words to the effect of "the outside boat must give room if it is able to do so from the point at which the overlap was established"

So in your case the clear ahead boat has no obligation to anticipate that the clear astern boat will obtain an overlap, but once they do the now overlapped outside boat must provide room at the obstruction. So him obtaining an overlap and then immediately calling for water is entirely fair game. Assuming you immediately gave him room then you're fine, even if he goes aground. That would just be evidence that his overlap was too late for you to react.

 

[scottie]

Never reached point of protest but reflecting on is still seems wrong that he knew the shore was there and had speed in hand both boats doing about max hull speed should add overtaking boat with spiniker we were sailing white sail so sailing in different classes
It's only racing!

Just checked and 19b would seem to cover it but

 

[lpdsn]

Never reached point of protest but reflecting on is still seems wrong that he knew the shore was there and had speed in hand both boats doing about max hull speed should add overtaking boat with spiniker we were sailing white sail so sailing in different classes
It's only racing!

Just checked and 19b would seem to cover it but

What on earth were you doing luffing a boat in another class if you were sailing white sails? Forget any discussion of politeness or whatever, you were sacrificing time to inconvenience a boat you weren't even racing against. Quickest for you just to let them get past and on their way.

Not surprised you invoked their ire and they used the rules against you.

 

[scottie]

What on earth were you doing luffing a boat in another class if you were sailing white sails? Forget any discussion of politeness or whatever, you were sacrificing time to inconvenience a boat you weren't even racing against. Quickest for you just to let them get past and on their way.

Not surprised you invoked their ire and they used the rules against you.

Not so much luffing as not wanting her wind shadow

 

[lpdsn]

Not so much luffing as not wanting her wind shadow

Trouble is you got it, were always going to get it and I guess suffered a fair bit extra in their failed attempts to establish an overlap, not to mention the extra distance you sailed yourself to defend your position.

In the worst case you could have provoked a reaction from a presumably better sailed boat that knew the rules better than you and could have got yourself protested.

Your best case when being overtaken by a faster boat in another class is to shoo them past as quickly as possible with the minimum effect on yourself. By all means position yourself to get them to go to leeward, but once you start having to fight for that you're losing out, and the other boats in your class which aren't involved are gaining ground on you.

 

[michael_w]

Team racing is about the only time getting into a luffing match makes sense. One exception would be to try and maintain the inside berth on an imminent mark rounding.

 

[lpdsn]

One exception would be to try and maintain the inside berth on an imminent mark rounding.

That's about the one time I can recollect where forcing boats in another class to go below us worked. Won the race by 1s on corrected time and the second placed boat had to go around the outside of two boats from another class.

 

[flaming]

That's about the one time I can recollect where forcing boats in another class to go below us worked. Won the race by 1s on corrected time and the second placed boat had to go around the outside of two boats from another class.

A few years ago the Farr 45s came to Dartmouth and raced on the same course as us. The timing always seemed to work out that they arrived at the top mark for the second time when we got there for the first. Managing them became very important, and slightly overstanding so as to ensure they went below us was a good move. Did also go high early a couple of times downwind, which worked.

On the flip side I got luffed (sharply and aggressively when I was passing reasonably clear) by a white sailing backmarker of the class in front at Cowes 2 years back, to the point at which we broached. He was out of contention in his class (an OD where all the others were flying kites), we were lying second and chasing the leader hard. That was not cool.

 

[scottie]

a bit further context in that we were close to a weather shore and really saying please pass to leeward

 

[flaming]

a bit further context in that we were close to a weather shore and really saying please pass to leeward

Sounds like you need to say it louder / earlier..!

If you decide to go up and he goes with you, I don't think you can complain when he makes it stick, it just means you haven't gone early enough or far enough. I accept that in this case that might just mean he was braver with the shore than you, but that's racing...

 

[Triassic]

Putting all the rules to one side for a moment and just looking at what is generally considered good manners (I know some people believe such things don't exist in racing but in my experience they certainly do...) then it usually comes down to both skippers appreciating the others situation. On the odd occasion I have shared a course or mark with monohulls then I have usually found them most accommodating in this respect. If I'm fast enough to catch them easily then I can usually sail under them and not impact on their race at all, however sometimes they are considerably bigger than me with a rig that is going to blanket me enough to stop this happening, so I will go over them. When this happens then because their rig is so much larger, combined with my uninterrupted speed, I am past them before they even notice the lee effect. If it's a particularly long leg and the speeds are close enough to make any overtake a drawn out affair then it's easy enough to generate sufficient separation not to impact on each other.

It seems to me that in the situation described by the OP they were both losers, and not just in respect of time.....

 

[lw395]

Putting all the rules to one side for a moment and just looking at what is generally considered good manners (I know some people believe such things don't exist in racing but in my experience they certainly do...) then it usually comes down to both skippers appreciating the others situation. On the odd occasion I have shared a course or mark with monohulls then I have usually found them most accommodating in this respect. If I'm fast enough to catch them easily then I can usually sail under them and not impact on their race at all, however sometimes they are considerably bigger than me with a rig that is going to blanket me enough to stop this happening, so I will go over them. When this happens then because their rig is so much larger, combined with my uninterrupted speed, I am past them before they even notice the lee effect. If it's a particularly long leg and the speeds are close enough to make any overtake a drawn out affair then it's easy enough to generate sufficient separation not to impact on each other.

It seems to me that in the situation described by the OP they were both losers, and not just in respect of time.....

The key to what you say is the speed differential.
A lot of racing yachts pass each other like lorries on a dual carriageway, one going 2% or 5% faster than the other.
Some people think luffing is bad manners, but is it worse than blanketing someone for a long time?

The best strategy is to look further ahead and avoid close encounters as much as possible, or at least more than your rivals.
If you are slower, let them by and surf their bow wave....

 

[Birdseye]

What on earth were you doing luffing a boat in another class if you were sailing white sails? Forget any discussion of politeness or whatever, you were sacrificing time to inconvenience a boat you weren't even racing against. Quickest for you just to let them get past and on their way.

Not surprised you invoked their ire and they used the rules against you.

Got to agree with this but one of my crew always wants to luff up anything else sailing anywhere near. To him its personal, him against the guys on the other boat.

At the level I race at ( call it white sails plus spinnaker ie NHC) its almost always better to sail your own race ignoring other boats as much as you can. Clean air is everything.

 

[lpdsn]

Got to agree with this but one of my crew always wants to luff up anything else sailing anywhere near. To him its personal, him against the guys on the other boat.

I'd really advise any club racer against picking a fight with a serious IRC racer. You may mess up their race enough for them to think it's personal too.

There are people out there who know the case books off by heart, never mind the RRS. I know, I've raced with a few of them. There are subtles that could really be used against you if they want to come back and start a luffing duel with you, and the club racer is quite likely to end up being caught out, protested and disqualified.

Racing is a serious competitive sport. There are a set of rules to be obeyed, but there are no unwritten rules. At a serious IRC level people push things to the limits of the letter of the rules (and sometimes further if they think they can talk their way out of it in the protest room). And they'd no more spurn presenting their case in as favourable a light as possible than a QC would.

As I said before, there really isn't much to be gained even if you catch them out by surprise in the first luff. They're faster, so they'll come back, and every time they come back you're losing time until they eventually do roll over the top of you.

As you say, pick your battle with someone in your own class - and even then, only if you genuinely have something to gain from it.

 

[scottie]

To go back to original point I was miffed that immediately he gained the overlap he called for water so if there was no water why go there in the its place
Whether much speed was lost in either boats case was debatable
Yes I agree luffing out of class is not rational but going sailing on a cold wet day blowing f5-6 is maybe not that rational
Thank you all for your input

 

[flaming]

To go back to original point I was miffed that immediately he gained the overlap he called for water so if there was no water why go there in the its place

Because he could, by the definition of rule 19, and he deemed it faster than trying to sail through your lee?

I don't really understand why you're miffed, they've not done anything wrong. The very fact that he's waited until he was overlapped before mentioning room, tells me he's applying the rules very fairly and not trying to bully a white sail boat.

 

[Triassic]

Because he could, by the definition of rule 19, and he deemed it faster than trying to sail through your lee?
.

Just because you "can" do something doesn't mean you have to, or that you can't do it with a little consideration for the other boat. If these two boats were racing each other then fair enough, all's fair in love, war and racing..... but they weren't. They were each engaged in their own race with either the clock, or some other yacht elsewhere and if both skippers respected each others position it would have simply been a case of giving each other enough room to sail the best race they could. Rules and tactics should be kept for dealing with the opposition, not fellow sailors.

 

[flaming]

Just because you "can" do something doesn't mean you have to, or that you can't do it with a little consideration for the other boat. If these two boats were racing each other then fair enough, all's fair in love, war and racing..... but they weren't. They were each engaged in their own race with either the clock, or some other yacht elsewhere and if both skippers respected each others position it would have simply been a case of giving each other enough room to sail the best race they could. Rules and tactics should be kept for dealing with the opposition, not fellow sailors.

Disagree. When you sign up to race, you sign up to the RRS, which make it very clear that they apply between all boats racing, regardless if they were racing in the same race. Winning your race when you're racing handicap racing is really about keeping your boat going at its optimum, it's all about percentages.

When you are racing slow boats (cruiser racer monohulls) losing a knot of speed is losing a very large percentage of your speed. The faster boat probably couldn't sail through the lee of the slow boat and would end up stuck under them, surging forward when the kite has wind, dropping back when it collapses - been there, stuck under a slower boat in another class, got the t-shirt, lost the races by seconds.

So to him the OP is an obstruction, and his fastest race is to go over the top. And that's where he went. The OP had the right to try and protect his fastest race - which he deemed best done by luffing. By luffing towards the shoreline the OP has indicated that he had engaged the other boat. But they don't get to apply the rules to engage back? Once the faster boat had an overlap he was entitled, by the rules, to ask for room to avoid the obstruction that the OP was sailing towards / past. Which he did.

This incident seems to me like a perfect demonstration of the rules working. The only question to me is if the OP was actually best served in the long run by luffing the faster boat (and really without knowing the two boats that's hard to know) and whether if he really wanted to protect his air he should have luffed further sooner. That the other boat got an overlap indicates that the steps he took to defend his air didn't work.