If a Laser, L,  going upwind with the helmperson fully hiked, had the mainsheet explode at the transom, and the helm instead of letting his pfd displace in the water, tried to scramble into the boat such that the Laser heeled to windward almost capsizing to windward and the mast hit another competitor to windward. 

Then  I would strongly recommend that L did some penalty turns. 

I would feel differently if they were going downwind.

Richard, thank you for your open minded response, but i agree with Sue that relaxing the promptness of the hail and RRS 44 penalty requirements would be undesirable.

One of the purposes of the suggestion was to reinforce the requirements for prompt hail and prompt response.

If you let go of those requirements you will get into all sorts of disputes about:

AIUI the purpose of making the respondent (not a word in this RRS) field mandatory is that the system automatically messages that entity that they are the subject of a hearing.  Naming a boat there will make it appear that that boat has been protested.

Wouldn't a better solution for requests fo  redress be to either omit the respondent field or make it non mandatory, and message the race committee that a request has been received in every case?

Thank you for everything that you do.

Regarding #1
There are several professional sailors earning 7 figure contracts now.  As the lawsuit between Ineos and Athena illustrates, Ben Ainslie earned $9 million in each of the last 2 Americas Cups. Tom Slingsby, Peter Burling, Jimmy Spithill , Dylan Fletcher etc are all well paid professional athletes
2. A Sail GP teams sells for $60 million. It is only after the cost cap that an AC campaign comes down to $100 million.
3. The contact between France and NZ was fairly brutal, and resulted in two hospitalizations. One for 6 months.
4. Most of the professional sport has on the water umpiring, and a good amount of amateur racing as well.

The good news is that it does not seem to have significantly altered the ethos of our sport. We are taught early in our sailing lives that winning doesnt count if you lose the respect of your fellow competitors.  All of these professional sailors came up the ranks through the amateur sport and learned the importance of good sportsmanship.  Very few sports have the equivalent of our Part 1 fundamental rules and  "A boat and her owner shall compete in compliance with recognized principles of sportsmanship and fair play."

I think the hundreds of judges who volunteer their time and reinforce the principles of good sportsmanship have contributed to this unique vibe in the sport of sailing. After a life time in competing in this sport on all continents, I cannot express my gratitude to the judging community enough.......(even the French judge who dinged me for 42 at the Bermuda Worlds :)  )