I have had a number of protest hearings using Skype.  For technical protests where facts can be clearly established on technical or written evidence as in measurement or navigation protests they can work well.  

Most recent was in "Sail Arabia - the Tour 2017 where we had protest committee hearings in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.  

Comments from the chairman's report are below.


Quote

The Skype protest hearings worked technically although there were setup difficulties in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Imperative to have high internet speeds and good connectivity.  The protest committee did establish facts from which we were able to draw conclusions and give decisions.  In this event all the facts found were unambiguous.  It is not always the case.  

Use of a webcam in the Dubai hearings improved the process.  Use of two webcams one focused on the protest committee member(s) and one on the parties/witnesses from the other side of the table with both webcams linked into the Skype conference would further improve the process. 

Unquote. 

We considered the issues in the oceanic & offshore judging working party when drafting the chapter introduced into the 2013 - 16 IJ manual.  

The comments made in the IJ Manual remain valid.  

Skype Protests are not acceptable in my view when there is doubt about probabilities and subjective assessment of evidence, through body language and tone or response.  This is typically the issue in complex part 2 rules cases.    The use of webcams can help in this regard but without multi microphone structures as would be the case in a professional TV video conferencing suite my experience to date has been unsatisfactory.  

Even in technically advanced countries connectivity is a big issue.  We were struggling in a major hotel with "high speed' connectivity in Dubai. 

As regards sailing instructions many of the offshore / oceanic race committees I have chaired empower the protest committee to use any hearing mechanism they feel suitable.    

Whilst boats are tracing offshore technical protests can be resolved by email.  

Offshore racing development envisages establishing facts in  mark rounding by a combination of drone linked computer download, webcam and GPS so reducing virtual mark rounding protests.   

Happy to discuss or go into a lot more detail.  

David Brunskill

US Sailing Guidelines for Video Conference Protest or Redress Hearings

Hello everyone,

I have been member of the skype jury panel for Sail Asia 2016, and I can only second Davids comments above. One thing to add to this is that I think we really need to one IJ with technical expertise (in operating the video conference system) locally at such an event (or its stop-overs), and then dial others in via skype. The one reason is to make sure that all procedures are properly followed, and to give information about behaviour, body language etc to the other jury members. Own observation with high quality video is preferrable but it should be a work around until then. This local IJ can then also create scenarios with the model boats during the jury deliberation after the testimony to discuss.

All the best,
Markus

Hello together,

I also had a difficult case end of last year where I called Adrian Bauder via FaceTime.
It was perfect, and he did also the scribe which left me free to aks questions and observe
the behavior and testimonies of the sailors.

So, in summary, I'd say it's the right way to go to save travel cost and still have a skilled
Jury to make decisions.

Cheers from Germany
Chris