Forum: The Racing Rules of Sailing
Vendée Globe - Request for redress
Martin Rheaume
Nationality: Canada
Certifications:
- Regional Judge
- Club Race Officer
0
I have question... being a dinghy sailor I am not knowledgeable at all in outshore sailing. The International Jury of the 2020 Vendée Globe have published their decisions for time compensations awarded to three of the four skippers who were involved in the rescue operation for Kevin Escoffier. While the number of hours indicate the time they have lost during the rescue operations, loosing 10 hours in 5kt of wind will not have the same impact (distance-wise) as loosing 10 hours in 25kt of winds.... Why is it expressed in time compensations instead of NM ? Couldn't the jury estimate the lost distance ? Thanks in advance for the responses.
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Forum Moderator's Note:
We usually do not allow questions on the forum which pertain to recent PC decisions/actions, but we felt that the question above was informational and not meant to criticize or question the PC action. Please keep that in mind as you respond.
Thanks - Paul and Ang
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Forum Moderator's Note:
We usually do not allow questions on the forum which pertain to recent PC decisions/actions, but we felt that the question above was informational and not meant to criticize or question the PC action. Please keep that in mind as you respond.
Thanks - Paul and Ang
Comments
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The time given in redress will be deducted from each boat's finishing time once they have finished. This means that they may be given a finishing place better than that of a boat that crossed the finishing line ahead of them. This is always difficult to explain to non specialist media and to readers and spectators who are not familiar with the sport of sailing.
For this reason, in many races the SIs allow for protests to be heard remotely while boats are still sailing, and the penalty, expressed as a time, is taken while the boat is still racing. This, so that, as far as possible, the order in which a boat crosses the finish line is her finishing place.
Hans.
Gordon, how is that implemented? Are penalized boats (or boats not granted redress) required to heave to for a specified time period?
They have to consider the effective time lost , the eventual added time lost in loosing a meteo window (during the rescue), the stress felt when looking for a guy (a friend?) potentially about to get lost, the time to re-enter the race, etc.
If you would be able to know one thing and the opposite, or what happens and what would happen if.., then, definitely, you would win the Virtual Vendee Globe.
As a Jury, even as an International Jury, you still have to be very humble about any decision you make.
I'm pretty sure, in this very case, they did so. And tried to make the best decision, with the best arguments.
And, obviously, it's a good thing to make the decision early, and at least before arrival time. As the decision is not changed or influenced by the actual reality of the finishing time.
Keep sailing, and enjoy.
When we were writing the paragraph on redress for the IJ manual it was clear that we couldn't be dogmatic on how redress should be calculated - there are so many different ways of calculating it and applying it to the results. But in most cases a time penalty applied during the race gives the race team, press, public and competitors an understandable way of compensating for any redress issue.