In the age of COVID without the usual ability to deliver a protest in person to the Race committee. SI’s have been adding the request to submit them electronically. The question has arisen that an SI only had a generic email address like “protest@(insert club).org”. If a person submitting a protest sent it directly to members of the Race committee and not to the generic address would that protest be valid? The person monitoring the generic address would have just forwarded it on to the same RC member that had received the direct email saving time thus allowing for a arbitration hearing to be held the same day instead of possibly days later.
Questions:
1) Are electronic submissions to the ultimate recipients and not the generic address valid?
2) If the SI’s have 2 addresses and the word “and” between them valid if only sent to one of the 2?
3) If a physical submission was made to a RC member would it have been valid despite the SI statement to submit electronically?
4) If under pre/post COVID world can protests be delivered to any RC member at any place even if the SI’s state a location or person?
I have not been able to find any appeals or Cases that cover these questions. I’d appreciate your collective guidance for going forward.
Thanks.
Ant change to this would have to be noted as a change to a si to be valid.
If correctly changed and an e mail address is given then that is the only address that can be used.
Physical submission would not be possible if the rule had been changed.
Corvid does not change the rules, either in the RRS or sailing instructions.
So, the tradition of just submitting to any RC members would suffice if there is no defined “race office” or specific person noted in a PROPERLY MODIFIED SI? What would the “race office” be in a non landed club organized race?
Can't email deliver a protest to the race office, too?
If an email (or electronic message) could be read on a device in the race office (even if ultimately read elsewhere) by a person who is part of that race office, I would say the purpose of the sentence is fulfilled. No?
(e.g. I read that line generally. e.g. your written protest must get to the race office (by any means) as opposed to having to knock on the door of a physical room, and hand over a piece of paper.)
So an email to joebloggs@gmail.com could be as good as an email to protests@abc-yacht-club.com
The problem is that Joe Bloggs has the sole burden of checking email, and may not want his email address public. So maybe a club dedicated email address is best, which is set to forward to protest committee.
(Or just use racingrulesofsailing.org!)
Happily, protest committees always have the power to overrule the SIs, but why not just do what it says?
Cringe 😬
PC’s are obligated to follow the rules. The SI’s are a rule. Unless there is a conflict between rules, or a rule like an SI breaks the RRS and the PC finds the SI is unenforceable, the PC can not overrule the SI.
The boat should seek redress just like for any other 'alleged improper action'. During the hearing she should provide evidence that the system was flawed, and there was no fault of her own. Could she recreate the 'technical failure' in the protest room?
Otherwise, I'm afraid the balance of probabilities is that the post was never sent. In which case the DSQ would still stand according to the NOR/SI you mentioned.
First these types of si should be discretionary penalties and perhaps no protestanle by competitors.
This leads to the next point, this si creates an offence but it does not say it changes the rules on validity or that the rrs 44 so the penalty turns may be valid.
IMO any SI which limits the method of delivery of a hearing request, changes that rule in which the word “delivered” is used. For protests & R4R that’s RRS 61.3 & RRS 62.2 respectively. It seems to me that any SI that changes what we commonly understand as “…delivered to the race office ..” to mean ‘only by electronic means’ .. changes that rule.
These limits can lead to some seemingly unreasonable situations. I was a member of a PC panel which had such an SI, requiring only electronic submission of hearing requests. This regatta did not use RRoS’s event management system.
The time limit was fast approaching and I watched these people frantically try to fillout, take a pic and email the form within the TL when we were right there in front of them.
We can add to this discussion SI’s that require the use of a specific form, which takes away the sending of a simple email to the race office (if email address is stated) describing the incident. We explored the bare-min filing on the forum in this thread: Min Protest Filing.
I am all for adding electronic delivery methods … email addresses for the race office, race management portals like RRoS, etc. and making forms available for those who want to use them. But for those who might stumble when dealing with tech, keeping open the old fashioned methods is a good idea and user-friendly IMO.