@ Angelo, I hope you had an exhilarating spin class. I look forward to your new thread on admissibility of gps data. I will have one general question, and one observation.

The question (and I genuinely dont know the answer) is :  If I call a witness for a protest, can they decline to attend the protest meeting? 

The observation is that I have been in a race where we are required to carry a tracking device (yellowbrick) and the NOR states that everyone's position is reported and shared simultaneously every four hours. It was clearly stated that it would be a breach to disable or turn off the tracker prior to and during the 4 hourly  "check in" .  Thus, in effect the NOR required sharing GPS data. 

As an aside , it had the fun (and intended) effect that if we saw a good reason to gybe 20 minutes before the check in, we would hold off for 20 minutes, then gybe and get a 4 hour jump while we were "dark" before anyone could cover us. It turns out that trans ocean racing can be almost as much fun as racing dinghies on the River Crouch.  :)

See discussion above.

Hitting an anchored boat may found a claim for damages, but does not break any IRPCAS rule.

Hitting a dock or pier, the same.

This one is worth answering directly, because you and the app agree and it wasn't letting you see that.

The rule 14 card only ever proposes one move — you hold your course — and asks whether holding it is legal. So on a card where the answer is "that's a foul", the app is saying exactly what you were saying: swift and decisive action was required and holding on wasn't good enough. It just never gave you the words for it, and it never told you that contact was actually coming, which left "surely she'll get out of the way" as a perfectly reasonable read of the picture.

The card now says so in the setup: she is not keeping clear, and you are going to hit her. What's left to judge is the rules question — rule 14's first sentence binds both boats all the time, so the interesting half is the second: a right-of-way boat need not act until it is clear the other one isn't keeping clear. When that stops being true is a real question, and it's the one the card is trying to ask.

Clearly placed there by a trimmer trying to share the guilt! ;0))

Thanks very much John. I appreciate your efforts in replying in so much detail.

Our annual program includes a Pointscore Series (Pursuit format; scratch -> biased towards slower boats) run every fortnight ( 15 races per season), Championship (Yardsticks; 2 races each day; 14 per season) and Sprints (Yardstick, 3-5 races per day; 24 say races per season) => run in turn every other week.  (so C-P-S-P each month).
 
We'll be running our annual October Regatta (6 Divisions) , Hobie States, Spiral Nationals + the International Canoe World Titles this year so we'll be busy, and having lots of fun and enjoyable times out on the Bay!

As Race Secretary I want to apply a common entrant list and a common set of rules for our club races. (KISS).  We are transitioning from a Cox-Sprague system to low-point (Sailres) next season. We have a meeting next week to decide on the rules.

After much research and simulations and yours, and others kind feedback, my preferred approach is DNC= Starters+4. I thinks the committee could settle on DNC = [12] which is starters + 4 for our average fleet size of 8-10. There is a group who want to keep the regatta approach of Entrants + 1.
 
We'll see who 'wins' the debate. Interesting Times (pun intended)! 

Cheers and Thanks again for all the great feedback. 
PS many clubs face similar issues and so it is worth discussing it here.