Situation 1
The organizing authority published the notice of race for an event. The results of the event are to contribute to the scoring of an overall annual ranking. The race committee did not publish sailing instructions; nevertheless, it conducted a series of races and scored them.

Question 1
Can the race committee score the races and therefore have a valid event?

Answer 1
It depends.

The Race Committee is required by rule 90.2(a) to publish written sailing instructions and by rule 25.1 to make them available to each boat before the race starts. However, it is not mandatory to publish separate documents for the Notice of Race and the Sailing Instructions; hence, a single document can be published provided that it complies with the requirement of rule J2.

If this does not happen, it is impossible to determine if any boat has started, sailed the course, and finished; therefore, the race may not be scored as the requirements of rule 90.3(a) are not met.

Situation 2
A sailor entered this event but did not sail in it because of the lack of sailing instructions.

Question 2
If the answer to question 1 is yes, can the sailor get redress based on the claim that his score in the annual ranking was made significantly worse through no fault of his own?

Answer 2
Failing to publish the information required by rule J2 is an improper omission of the race committee and a boat may seek redress based one that. Before granting redress, the protest committee shall determine if the other conditions to grant redress are met (i.e. did that omission made the boat’s score significantly worse without any fault of the boat?). However, when deciding the request for redress, the protest committee shall not consider how the ‘annual ranking’ is affected unless it is a series of races as understood by the RRS.

25 August 2022