Karim: Surely if following boats see a problem but then continue to sail into the rope - which should now be obvious- then this would not be 'through no fault of her own'. So redress for the first 2 but probably not for the others imo.

To me once a boat had done a 44.2 set of turns, they have not initially finished and there can be no other score but the last finish.

Other rule breaches are something else which really should be protested by boats.

There is no reason for a rc to act if they score the finish after the turns.

John,

Very interesting question. To shed some light on the question of whether someone goes faster by flattening the boat than "otherwise", here's a video of an ILCA acceleration with actual speeds in the top right. I'd suggest on focusing on the footage from 02:10 to 02:30. (I'm the guy in the video.)

Here are my observations of this video:

Without the speed chart, I could see you claim (in good faith!) that at 02:14, I'm committing a prohibited ROCK 4 to propel (accelerate) the boat faster. But in fact, the boat slows.

Meanwhile, the "single action of the body that clearly propels the boat" is hiking parallel to the water. I doubt anyone here would claim that hiking hard would be considered a ROCK 4, but the data show it's propelling (accelerating) the boat.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

Addendum: in case anyone's curious about the data source, it's a GoPro Hero 13 Black, with GPS position sampling at 10 Hertz (10 latitude/longitude readings per second). 

@JimChamp ... and that is, of course, why I shouldn't depend on my memory of what a definition says.   I was forgetting the ' ... referred to in the rule using the term' caveat and therefore wondering whether the boat (in this case an obstruction) would fall under the 'in the absence of' part.  Obviously not, as the boat that is the obstruction is not referenced in the rule using the term.'   Thanks for the reminder. 

Great news - World Sailing has issued the corrections including this item..

Visit

to download both the 2025-2028 RRS with corrections and the detailed document listing the specific changes.

John