What protest form are you looking at? Mine says 'dismissed' or 'Boat(s) ........ is (are) disqualified from races ..../penalized as follows'

Given your choices I would uphold the protest - and penalize the protestor. Rule 64.1 makes no constraint that only the protestee may be penalized when a protest is upheld.

Hi Mike:
Though these national authority published forms seem always to contain certain “awkwardnesses”, I think of it this way. Once a protest hearing is “open” (clears validity), each party enjoys the same stature. Though we may take testimony or process witnesses in a certain order, for all practical purposes, the process no longer cares who is whom. If your decision penalizes a party, the protest has been upheld.

The Protest form available on the RYA (UK) website was revised in 2016, Here is the Decision section of the form.....

Thanks Clark.

Definition of uphold - confirm or support........ surely that means the Protest is confirmed or supported, which would not be the case if the protestOR was DSQ and the protestEE was shown to have broken no rule. The Protest would not have been supported, quite the opposite in fact!

Mike
The answer's simple. Ignore the form. It's like nearly all forms and doesn't cater for every situation. Once the protest committee has made its decision, write the facts and the conclusion in the spaces on the form and either put the decision into the conclusion space or staple on a separate piece of paper with the decision. It would be easy to say we should do away with all forms but actually they are very useful and we need them, but we should rule them and not let them rule us.

David

• I like David's solution, ignore it.
• I like the US Sailing Form better for not having it.
• I like Grant's description of the hearing process as it highlights an insightful difference between a protest hearing (protestor/protestee interchangable once open) vs a legal proceeding (plaintiff vs defendant, not interchangeable in the same proceeding)

The common understanding of the word "upheld" clearly does not fit the idea it is being used to convey in this circumstance. That said, I've struggled to think of a better one that works in all cases.

The best I could come up with was some notion or idea that the protest "bared fruit" or was "resolved", but a word to convey the precise meaning we are after escaped me.

I think a Tick Box "Bared Fruit" is an excellent idea!

Protest against Boat B was dismissed, the counter protest against Boat A was upheld.

would that require a new Valid Protest ? What would the time limit for submission be? Surely that would be the same time as the original Protest (which probably has passed), as the facts were freely available before that time (both parties witnessed the incident), so a counter Protest would be invalid?

I think the original Protest identifies the incident, and investigation of the incident at a Hearing identifies the boat that broke a rule. I don't think a new Protest is required, but I bow to superior knowledge!

For those of you not lucky enough to be beta testers for the new RRS.org mobile app (see what I did there ;), the protest form in the app is much abbreviated in an attempt to get back to the basic elements of what is required. Granted we're talking back-of-the-form on this thread, but the front is just as much of a problem (in my mind). I think the form has become a bit of check list for the protest committee instead of a competitor-friendly tool for getting the process started. (Just look at the examples provided above...) I've encountered a large number of judges who don't use the back of any form but instead just write their decision in Word (or, god forbid, in RRS.org). And we have removed much of the clutter on the front of the form and made the form more user friendly for the competitors (and judges) in RRS.org. The point being that the back of the form can be and is entirely ignored a large part of the time. Whatever constraints that are created by the form do not become rules just because of an overly officious form. So, your protest was UPHELD despite the fact that your form doesn't provide a checkbox for it..

To answer Mike's last note, there has to be a valid protest and that means the form has to identify 'the incident'. I don't think the 'incident' can be that a boat didn't do her turns properly - it has got to be that she did something that might have broken a rule, such as she was on port and didn't keep clear of your boat on starboard. If that's not there, the protest is invalid and that can't be put right once the protest is put in. Of course a new protest could be put in late and the committee could extend the time 'if there is good reason to do so' but I don't think that failing to describe any incident is a good reason.

Of course it's not the end of the world if the protest fails, get out and beat the b.......d in the next race!

David