Forum: Race Officers
Gates and the direction competitors pass through them
Jim Archer
Nationality: United States
0
Interesting debate arose on a boat I was sailing yesterday. There was essentially a race down a channel and back, and a particular set of red/green channel markers were to be treated as a "gate" we needed to pass through. Of course, this meant go right leaving a green to starboard or port leaving a red to port. The SIs listed the course with that as a "gate."
One of the other sailors on the boat insisted that the SIs were vague and that as such we could pass through the gate in either direction; from outside the channel, he wanted to round a green to port reentering the channel. I thought this was ridiculous and we ended up doing it my way. After the race he grabbed the SIs and tried to show me his point. I still disagree with him, I thought it was clear.
But just for the heck of it I tried to find something in RRS about gates and how to round them. There is no definition for gate. So, what governs the direction a competitor passes through a gate? Other than common sense of course.
UPDATE:
Here are the SIs, in this case "Pursuit Class Circle Six" starting on page 11.
https://yachtscoring.com/event_documents/15538/CRW-SIs2023.pdf
One of the other sailors on the boat insisted that the SIs were vague and that as such we could pass through the gate in either direction; from outside the channel, he wanted to round a green to port reentering the channel. I thought this was ridiculous and we ended up doing it my way. After the race he grabbed the SIs and tried to show me his point. I still disagree with him, I thought it was clear.
But just for the heck of it I tried to find something in RRS about gates and how to round them. There is no definition for gate. So, what governs the direction a competitor passes through a gate? Other than common sense of course.
UPDATE:
Here are the SIs, in this case "Pursuit Class Circle Six" starting on page 11.
https://yachtscoring.com/event_documents/15538/CRW-SIs2023.pdf
Comments
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I think the course diagrams are clear enough in the SIs. There might be a problem in that the description of the marks does not match what you said. So long as that change to the SIs was made clear as described in part 3 of the SIs, I think you are in the right.
How a gate is to be treated generally has to be in the SI's either in the course diagram or written, especially now that 28.1c is gone.
Has anyone seen 2025-2028 rules yet? Seems early to have any draft versions out there.
Thanks everyone!
The screenshot I showed was comparing rule 28 in the 17-20 and the 21-24 versions. As noted, it was changed to delete the reference to rounding a gate. But the 21-24 definitions still include that line.
I understand their desire to remove redundant sentences. However, in my defense, it's a bit confusing to change one occurrence of a sentence and leave the other one identical.