At a recent regatta, I introduced on-water Arbitration for Part 2/RRS 28/31.
The NOR already provided for all protests to be reported to the race committee at the finishing line and for protests to be oral.
The aim of on-water arbitration is to:
- Reduce time lost in awaiting boats to come ashore, complete written protests, and await expiry of protest time limit. This particularly applies to large fleets of over 40 boats where last boat may finish 20 or more minutes after leading boats.
- Reduce perceptions of formality and difficulty in the protest process.
Procedures was as follows:
- a protesting boat was required to inform the race committee [vessel] or an umpire of the identity of the protestee and the incident at the first reasonable opportunity after finishing. The race committee or umpire was required to record these details. I initially used the attached Arbitration Form, but that was a bit unweildy in an Umpire RIB, and I switched to just writing in a WetNotes notebook.
- the race committee informed the umpire/arbitrator of the details,
- the umpire vessel collected the parties and conducted an Arbitration. Note, there is no requirement to give time to prepare or access to the protest prior to Arbitration. The protesting boat's description of incident in the Arbitration constitutes the protest information and, for purposes of any subsequent hearing is 'given' to the protestee when they hear it in the Arbitration.
- if the protest was not resolved in Arbitration, a hearing ashore was scheduled and conducted.
Outcomes: 7 protests were received, 5 were resolved in Arbitration and 2 proceeded to hearing ashore. I was pretty pleased with that success rate.
Difficulties/Resources were as follows:
- managing parties' boats while arbitration is taking place: conditions were benign and boats could be held alongside the umpire RIB. This wouldn't have worked in heavier conditions.
- With just one Umpire boat, and consecutive Gold and Silver fleets racing requiring umpire coverage, the Umpire RIB was not available in the finishing area to receive protests until some time after Gold Fleet had finished. Cooperation from the race committee dealt with this.
- This was a relatively quick-fire event. It was undesirable to delay the start of the next race to accommodate the completion of more than one arbitration per race. This was solved by scheduling arbitrations for after the finish of the next race, or if necessary this could have been scheduled for on the beach.
I was pretty happy with this outcome. Given the restricted time-windows between races and lack of additional on-water judges I don't think on-water full hearings would have been practical.
What I'm now trying to do is to come up with some neat SI language to facilitate this.