See US Appeal 65.  Then you have to decide what is or is not an 'inevitable result'.  Good luck with that.

Turns aren't going to save her.

After the first contact she did not get well clear of other boats as soon as possible, so any turns she takes are not a Turns Penalty in accordance with RRS 44.2.

I think each contact is evidence of a separate breach of RRS 11 and RRS 14, so that's 3 incidents.

US Sailing Appeal 65
The test of whether two occurrences were one or two incidents is whether the second occurrence was the inevitable result of the first. A boat intending to protest another boat for two incidents during a race, no matter how close in time, must inform the protested boat that two protests will be lodged.

RYA Appeal 2003/3 
If there is a causal link between a series of collisions, they may be regarded as a single incident for the purposes of rule 60.3(a)(1).

The second contact was not caused by or a result of the first.

The third contact was not caused by or a result of either the first or the second.

So no link or consequence there.

In accordance with Case 49 protests for all the incidents should be heard together.

I'm not sure we have enough data to know that. Why did W not move to windwards and avoid 2 & 3? Did she have a problem on board?  If so perhaps it was not possible to avoid 2 and 3.

If she did turns, that may satisfy 1, but 2+3 can protest her and argue either side in the jury room. Or, it might satisfy 3, and 1+2 might protest. 

This is not a unique scenario. P (port) sails across S1 (starboard) bow forcing her to take vaping action. P continues for 2 boat lengths while S1 expresses her intent to protest and P replies with some words of defence ("sorry"). Hasn't initiated turns but is now repeating the process for S2.


The quoted US situation -- actually refers to the same boat making the protest.  Perhaps P avoid S2 but infringes S1 again.

Doesn't matter how many incidents there have been, W should retire immediately. If not, the protest committee should give serious consideration to giving her a DNE for breaking rule 2. Boats that knowingly break rules on the start line like this should not be allowed to get away with it.

@Graham it's not clear that this is intentional on behalf of W.  All incidents may be poor judgement or equipment failures etc.  If it is clear then I agree with you though.  If I were on the PC I'd want to interrogate whether it was done knowingly - if for e.g. they thought that  a few turns was better than ducking the whole of the fleet, then DNE.

And OP - for me, there appear to be 3 incidents here as per the independence criteria.