Forum: Race Committee & Race Management
Fair process for resolving abandonment?
0
Our club has a series of 20 races throughout the calendar year. There are four sub-series of 5 races. If all 5 races in a sub-series are completed, a boat's score is her total minus her worst score, so the overall series has up to 4 drops.
Eleven boats are entered in the series. In a race last weekend, six boats competed. Finish times were recorded by the race committee on a sheet of paper, which was subsequently lost overboard and not recovered. [EDIT: This is a mixed fleet with a perfomance handicap system.]
Rule 32.1(d) suggests that the race should be abandoned since this has affected the fairness of the competition.
Our internal debate now is what should happen next. Options under consideration are:
1 Not resail the race, base the sub-series results on the remaining 4 races (which means there will be no drops).
2 Give the 6 boats that competed a score of 3 points, with the other 5 scored DNC (which would be 8 points under our scoring system).
3 Resail the race at a future date with no restrictions.
4 Resail the race at a future date for the 6 boats that competed originally.
I can't find any guidance in Rules or Cases on what is the most fair approach for the 11 entrants and 6 participants. Are there any common practices in resolving this sort of issue?
Eleven boats are entered in the series. In a race last weekend, six boats competed. Finish times were recorded by the race committee on a sheet of paper, which was subsequently lost overboard and not recovered. [EDIT: This is a mixed fleet with a perfomance handicap system.]
Rule 32.1(d) suggests that the race should be abandoned since this has affected the fairness of the competition.
Our internal debate now is what should happen next. Options under consideration are:
1 Not resail the race, base the sub-series results on the remaining 4 races (which means there will be no drops).
2 Give the 6 boats that competed a score of 3 points, with the other 5 scored DNC (which would be 8 points under our scoring system).
3 Resail the race at a future date with no restrictions.
4 Resail the race at a future date for the 6 boats that competed originally.
I can't find any guidance in Rules or Cases on what is the most fair approach for the 11 entrants and 6 participants. Are there any common practices in resolving this sort of issue?
Comments
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Redress for the 6. (Average points, previous mark positions, 6 boat-town-hall to decide positions.) The point is that the 5 DNC shouldn't really get another stab for a mistake by RC when their attendance or not (deserving of DNC vs result) is clear. It's just too much of a gain for them.
It will then be up to the protest committee to resolve that.
If no handicap is involved, the protest committee should obtain evidence about the boats' finishing positions and then grant redress to give the boats their finishing places. If there were only six boats, that should not be difficult. If the race was handicapped, that approach may not be feasible.
So if the latter, abandon. Resail if you have an open date, otherwise forget about it. Missing out on a throwout is not much to fuss over. Could be no wind, or too much wind, or whatever on any given day.
In similar circumstances my RC poled the finishers and asked what each of them thought their position was and who was ahead and behind them. With (6) boats I suspect reasonable results would surface. If competitors disagreed with the posted results they could submit a RFR and have the PC do what they think is fair.
We have decided on the average points process.