Forum: The Racing Rules of Sailing
Continuing Obstruction And “an object”
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Sorry if this has been brought up before. I did a cursory search and turned up nothing.
A race course runs alongside a marina that contains a series of superyacht slips that are perpendicular to the course. In the high season, every one of the slips is filled with a large yacht. For all intents and purposes, it is a wall on that side of the course that spans 70 meters along side the course. It is however, made up of multiple individual objects, no single one of which is passed along for more than three hull lengths of the passing boats (as they are passing the bows or sterns of the yachts). Based on my reading, that’s not a continuing obstruction. Do you agree?
Or to make it ridiculous, I pound a series of pilings two feet apart stretching in a straight line for a kilometer. That is also not a continuing obstruction, right?
A race course runs alongside a marina that contains a series of superyacht slips that are perpendicular to the course. In the high season, every one of the slips is filled with a large yacht. For all intents and purposes, it is a wall on that side of the course that spans 70 meters along side the course. It is however, made up of multiple individual objects, no single one of which is passed along for more than three hull lengths of the passing boats (as they are passing the bows or sterns of the yachts). Based on my reading, that’s not a continuing obstruction. Do you agree?
Or to make it ridiculous, I pound a series of pilings two feet apart stretching in a straight line for a kilometer. That is also not a continuing obstruction, right?
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Thread Link: Can a series of "obstructions" change into a "continuing obstruction" based on conditions?
Note: It took me a while to wrestle the thread away from criticizing the NOR/SI's for not making the mooring field an exclusion zone. Once we got past all that, it was a good discussion.
When the nature of a continuing obstruction changes because of a projection or shallows, these features form part of the continuing obstruction, and a boat that has properly established an inside overlap is then entitled to any necessary additional room.
Angelo's discrete objects that are navigable around are a more complex situation, especially as there is inevitably a fuzzy area. Discrete objects less than one boat width apart obviously form a continuing obstruction, objects twenty boat lengths apart surely do not.
Maybe that is an issue with the question. Declaring the marina as an obstruction, or a line a short distance off the marina does, however, resolve the issue! The SIs should not just declare that the line is an obstruction but also make clear that boats shall not sail across the line. There is no RRS that says that a boat may not cross a line, or enter an area, that is declared as an obstruction.
RYA 1968/11
There is no zone at an obstruction to which rule 19 applies. A boat clear astern and required to keep clear is entitled to room if she becomes overlapped between the boat that was clear ahead and a continuing obstruction, as defined, provided that there was room to pass between them when the overlap began. When the nature of a continuing obstruction changes because of a projection or shallows, these features form part of the continuing obstruction, and a boat that has properly established an inside overlap is then entitled to any necessary additional room.
SUMMARY OF THE FACTS
W established an overlap on L between positions 1 and 2 when L was one and a half to two boat lengths from the shore.
Several boat-lengths ahead, some shallows extended from the shore from a brickwork structure.
W hailed ‘Water’ but L, although acknowledging the hail, made no attempt to give room and W ran aground.
W protested L under rules 19.2(b) and 19.2(c), but the protest committee dismissed the case, stating that W had tried to force a passage between L and the shore, L having been clear ahead when she came within three hull lengths of the obstruction. W appealed.
DECISION
W’s appeal is upheld. She is reinstated, and L is disqualified under rule 19.2(b).
The shore was a continuing obstruction because the boats would be passing alongside it for at least three of their hull lengths.
There is no zone at an obstruction - continuing or otherwise - at which rule 19 applies, and so the situation when one of the boats comes within three hull lengths of an obstruction is not relevant.
Rule 19.2(c) says that the inside boat’s right to establish an overlap between a boat and a continuing obstruction depends on whether there was room, as defined, to pass between the boat that was ahead and the continuing obstruction at the moment the overlap was established.
When W established her overlap, there was room to pass between L and the shore, and the overlap was therefore properly established. L initially then gave room as required by rule 19.2(b) but ceased to do so when the projecting shallows were reached. These shallows and the adjacent brick structure were part of the continuing obstruction, and W continued to be entitled to room.