Protest by Technical Committee at Cork Week

[mrming]

Statement from the skipper here.

 

[flaming]

I confess I'm struggling to make "genuine mistake with a new sail for this regatta" chime with sails measured by the sailmaker in 2022 and 2023, but sail data on the cert dating to 2017.

However, what is clear is that the protest committee have accepted that it is a mistake, as they did not DSQ the boat but applied a scoring penalty. And they are the ones who heard all the evidence.

 

[doris]

Oh...
I just found the protest form.
Racing Rules of Sailing

The pictures of the measurements of the jibs as declared by the sailmaker, when taken with the online data for the boat's declared measurements, are interesting. That rating is definitely not based on those jibs. Indeed the sail data is declared as provided in July 2017. When the date on the jibs are 2022 and 2023.

I'm still far more inclined to think "mistake" rather than cheating though. A false assumption that the new sails are the same size as the old, or the new sail data not being applied to the new rating at revalidation and the owner missing that. No excuse, but I suspect unlikely to be intentional cheating.

Whenever I had new sails the sailmaker automatically sent the new measurements to RORC, I just assumed this was a standard procedure. Maybe Peter Kay had a closer relationship with Lymington than some, or perhaps he had asked me years ago whether to and I just said yes and then forgot about it.
‘Forgetting’ to update the details is sloppy in extreme, especially bearing in mind the time and effort that goes into a winning boat. Very lucky the have the ‘mistake’ excuse accepted. But, there will now and forever be those glances and whispers.

 

[oldbloke]

Whenever I had new sails the sailmaker automatically sent the new measurements to RORC, I just assumed this was a standard procedure. Maybe Peter Kay had a closer relationship with Lymington than some, or perhaps he had asked me years ago whether to and I just said yes and then forgot about it.
‘Forgetting’ to update the details is sloppy in extreme, especially bearing in mind the time and effort that goes into a winning boat. Very lucky the have the ‘mistake’ excuse accepted. But, there will now and forever be those glances and whispers.

That presupposes that you are going to actually use those sails at a particular point in time. I might (for example) use my current set up for the rest of this season, or I might trial my new sails and find they are slower than the old ones

 

[Birdseye]

“People will cheat if they think they can get away with it”

Can anyone explain what the cheat gains by cheating - excepting lucrative sports, obviously. Do they lie in bed at night smug in their knowledge they got one over on everyone else? Why would anyone want to play with them?

I have always wondered that. I sail NHC where gaming the handicap often takes a different form. I won one series some years ago because the only handicap available at the start was a Byron number that was wrong because Byron had incorrect boat data. I wasnt happy and queried the handicap with him, which he corrected. I was roundly criticised by my crew as being everything from naive to an idiot. But like you, I didnt see the point of being a bandit ever if it wasnt a situation I had created.