Robert quick correction to your OP...  the previous rule also only required "identify" for the incident ... "not describe".  Below is the 2021-2024  version. 

If the PC and the protestee can tell one incident from another .. IMO the incident has been identified.

I just had a case where the protestor struggled a long time trying to fill out the PDF form on a phone because the SI's required an email submission. 

Frustrated with the form and running out of PTL, they emailed basically ... 

"In Race 1, Boat A protests Boat B for an incident at the finish-line."

There was contact between the boats .. the "which incident"  was clear to the protestee and the PC in the hearing. We found that the incident was identified. 

From the original post I am assuming they said something like: Boat A protests Boat B for an incident at 1425 on the first beat to windward for RRS 11. To me, that clearly satisfies RRS 60.3(a). We don't need a flowery description of what happened on the form; that is all going to come out in a hearing anyway. If boat A and boat B both can recognize from the "incident" as described (which time & place seem adequate) then I don't see how it would be invalid.

My opinion is that if the protestee can read the form and can identify the incident and prepare a defense, then the requirement that the incident be identified has been met.  If the protestee says they don't know what the protestor is talking about then the incident is not properly identified.

I do think the rule would be better if it said "identify the protestor and protestee and describe the incident."  With some of the protest forms I have seen there is confusion about whether the question about what rules the protestor believes were broken is sufficient for identifying the incident.

From the WS Judges' Manual:
F.2.1 Protest Contents rule 60.3(a)
The protest must be delivered in writing by the method identified in the sailing instructions. It must identify the protestor and the protestee. In almost all cases, this will be by sail number or the boat's name. If the protest misidentifies the boat, for example intends sail number 51 but writes 15, then the protest against 51 is unlikely to be upheld since 51 was not involved in the incident. If the protestor then decides to protest 15 after the protest time limit, there would not be good reason to extend the time limit.

There must be adequate information for the protestee to identify the incident and understand the allegation. When the incident is not identified, the protest will be found invalid. 

I'm very happy with the current word 'identify'.  Protestors often spend too much time on elaborate descriptions of the incident, when the protest committee is going to have to hear all that description given in evidence in the hearing.

We want to be hearing protests, not discouraging them.

John C said
My opinion is that if the protestee can read the form and can identify the incident and prepare a defense, then the requirement that the incident be identified has been met.  If the protestee says they don't know what the protestor is talking about then the incident is not properly identified. 

I would add '... and the protest committee agrees with the protestee.'

'I didn't understand the rule/protest/whatever' is the last refuge of of the scoundrel.

Here is a sample Hearing Request that I think quite adequately identifies the incident

Greg re: "In one recent case, a protest committee agreed that a diagram alone, drawn to scale and with sufficient detail, could satisfy this validity requirement without an accompanying narrative."

Interesting to ask if that meets the "in writing" requirement without using "words inscribed on a surface". 

I think the previous responses all generally agree on the concept.  I also agree with the tone of responses.

I would add my own 2 cents.

I think the change in 2025 is beautifully and deliberately vague. It allows us to be more realistic in accepting protests as valid leading to fewer protests being lost to a technicality of a minor missing piece.

Its important to see that the vagueness can mean that the same words may work for one protest but not another.  This is the beauty of it. The PC need to use some sense, as has been alluded to above. 

Consider these same words on two hearing request forms:
"Port-starboard crossing. ABC on port and me (XYZ) on starboard. Near the windward mark."

Form/Scenario A - It was a 600 mile offshore race. There is only one windward mark on the course which the fleet would pass about 30 minutes after the start. After that, the boats would be miles apart for the rest of the race. A media helicopter and OBRs covered the race live on YouTube. ABC is a 100' Maxi. XYZ is an 80' mini maxi. 

Form/Scenario B - It was an Optimist dinghy race. 80 boats in the fleet. The standard course passes this windward mark twice in a race. 3 races in a day. ABC and XYZ are two evenly matched competitors often seen in tacking duals.

The point is that what's needed to 'identify the incident' depends on the situation.

In the offshore race the protestor did not need much info at all to identify the incident.  I dare the jury to call it invalid because the time was not mentioned.

Whereas, for the busy optimist multi-race day, the protestor was woefully short. She may need all the old 2021-2024 elements. (the protestor and protestee, the incident; where and when the incident occurred, any rule the she believes was broken etc and perhaps even more. Hails made?) 

Good question Robert. 

I’ve found this site — racingrulesofsailing.org — to be very glitchy when trying to file a protest a couple of months ago. For some reason, I couldn’t submit more than a couple of sentences to describe the incident. Finally, I just wrote “Rule 10 prestart”. This was on an iPhone 12, latest iOS at the time.

So we can state what information protestors should provide, but if the software is glitchy, all bets are off. Is there something in the RRS that covers a situation where the OA doesn’t provide the means to file a proper protest?

As an aside/tangent, it’s a great idea for OAs to always have paper backups. Software bugs happen, networks go down, phone batteries die. 

A good description and diagram  attached by photo if electronically filed is very useful at events. A jury from a form my pre scribe the hearing from the facts on the form. These facts which have been identified are then tested by the testimony, before the final facts are found. It enables better hearings, and can save time.

If not otherwise changed the race officer should accept.

If no manned race officer, do what you can and claim redress.

I like online filing and do not want to have paper documents.
Electronic is time stamped, and if alternative paper we may not record acceptance times etc.

The electronic system is populated with the filing and often an e mail to the other party.

The paper receipt has to be interpreted entered into the electronic system before you can schedule. Gives less time to the protestee.

Often we have a PC portable and assist in completing the electronic form. Previous paper forms can be attached by photo

Following up on Benjamin's comment, I agree that the new wording is less precise than the old, and in this case, that's good because it gives more latitude to the protestor.  In my opinion, the new rule should reduce the number of protests that are found to be invalid because they did not contain all the information required.  "Identify the incident" surely means "describe the time and place and possibly the nature of the incident sufficiently so a reasonable person who was there at the time would know what incident is being protested." In most cases, something like "port/starboard crossing half way up the first windward leg" is sufficient.

Original poster…. Thank you all for the great responses and sharing your experiences. In summary, the general consensus and my perspective going forward is greatly simplified. From a judge perspective, I want to hear valid protests. If there’s enough information that the protestee knows why & where on the course they were protested the incident meets the “identity” requirement. Pretty simple really. Thank you all for weighing in and helping a fairly new judge get better at his craft. 

OK .. I'm just going to come out and say it. 

Why do we link to forms etc in SI's?  
Who is it really for?

In my experience I've never seen anything like the following SI regarding delivery of protests. IMO, this is a racer-centric SI.  NOR's/SI's can both inform and teach .. and we are squandering the opportunity. 

Wow, Angelo, you really are on your soapbox now!  If we go for your idea of advising competitors how to write protests, why stop there?  To be really competitor friendly, how about something like this:

SI 3.1  START   At the starting signal , boats should try to be near the starting line on the prestart side, sailing fast toward the first mark.  Before the start, they should go head to wind and check which end of the starting line is favored.  

I think it's actually bad advice to suggest to competitors, as you propose to do, that they should not include a description of the incident, and even a diagram.  A description and diagram helps to prepare the protestor for the hearing.  Further, it informs the protest committee about what the protest is all about, and although the PC will form their own conclusions during the hearing based on the evidence, getting their minds going in the right direction is a good idea, I think.  It's essentially an opening statement -- why forfeit the opportunity to make it?

While we're on this topic, I might as well bring up one of my longstanding complaints: Almost no regatta organizers have a "race office", yet there it is in rule 60.3(b), 61.2(b), 63.7(b) and elsewhere.  (If you think most yacht clubs have race offices, you should get out of your bubble more often.)  Even if there is a race office at the host club, what are the chances that there's somebody there to take protests, during the protest time period? 

Rule 63.7(b) is particularly out of step with reality.  It says, "(b) A party to the hearing may request a reopening by delivering a written request to the race office (or by such other method as stated in the sailing instructions) ..."  The probability that there is somebody in the race office (if there is one) after protest hearings are concluded is surely near zero, and most SIs don't specify an alternative way of delivering requests for reopening.  

I think those rules should all say something like "... delivered to a race official for the event."  And I agree with Ang and others that this option should be available even if there is an electronic filing option.  

To my chagrin, I just discovered that RRS V2 (a US prescription for post-race penalties)  doesn't even allow for an alternative to the race office.  It requires that written requests for post-race penalties be delivered to the race office, full stop.

Hi all,

Indeed, very interesting reading. We had a protest decided to be invalid because it was just not mentioned that the quite well described/identifiable  incident was happening on the first of two roundings close to Mark 1 in a 20 min race with 13 small catamarans .  Electronically filed within tight PTL in a web-based form. 

I find it is not good for our sport to judge them invalid wherever a PC can. Any thoughts or best practice rule facts?

Thanks,
Stefan 

This seems entirely inappropriate,  but we may not have all the facts.
The rules used to be tighter on time and place and the PC may have been thinking about the old rules.
I try to hear protests if possible.
If the wrong call is made one way ot the other the remedy is to protest.
If not done go for confirmation or correction under rrs 70.2

Earlier this year I did a couple of regattas with a senior judge who had just come off several international and national juries where the removal of the express requirement to identify when and where the incident occurred had been closely discussed.  He was insistent that to 'identify' an incident it was necessary to state when and where it occurred.

I have a little difficulty with applying this as a hard and fast rule when the drafters of the 2025 RRS quite clearly deleted that requirement from the rule, although I can't imagine a situation where an incident can be identified without saying when and where it occurred inn some way.

I've always believed that identifying when and where the incident occurred need not be in formulaic terms like 'at 14:34hr 255 m from the windward mark', but can be in somewhat vaguer terms like 'immediately after the start':  that tells me when the incident occurred, and IMHO applying a little reasonable deduction, that it occurred near the starting line.  Likewise I'd be happy with 'immediately before I hailed "protest" and displayed my red flag and the protestee hailed "I see your protest flag"'.

The point of the requirement is so that the protestee, given access to the protest, knows what he or she is accused of, and it thus enabled to prepare for the hearing.

I absolutely agree that we should be trying to hear protests, not close out hearings because of formulaic invalidity.

In Stefan's case, the incident was a mark-rounding incident, so the 'where' question is satisfied, but there were two mark-roundings:  the question would be, which of the two roundings, the 'when' question'.

Before concluding that the protest did not sufficiently identify the incident, I think I'd be wanting to hear from the parties.  If they were both close together at one rounding, but far apart for the next, then I would be happy that when the incident occurred was at the time of that rounding.  If they were both engaged at both roundings, possibly subject to some more evidence about a 'protest' hail, It may be that the incident was not 'identified'.

I agree with John Allan 100%, both as to his reasoning and his conclusion.  

Here's an example of identifying an incident without indicating where and when it occurred:  Suppose that on a windward leg, boat B on port tack tries to duck boat Y on starboard, but B rounds up in a gust and hits Y amidships, putting a hole in her side.  Y files a protest that includes a diagram showing that incident and describing the hole.  Surely, she has identified the incident, hasn't she?  After all, how many times did B put a hole in Y, that day?

Rob,  B rounds up in a gust and hits Y amidships, putting a hole in her side.  Y files a protest that includes a diagram showing that incident and describing the hole. 

So where the incident occured was 'where B rounded up and hit Y' 

And when the incident occurred was 'when B rounded up and hit Y'.

I think that completely identifies the incident.

Maybe that sort of situation was exactly what the drafters of the 2025 rule had in mind.

Stephan .. in your example "tracker time" is most likely the time after the start. If that is commonly known by all, it's a simple jump for the PC and Protestee to read that tracker-time as after-the-start time, which is the most common time reference in protests when time is used to ID the incident. So no problem.