Forum: Share your SI/NOR language.
Changing a rule
John Porter
Nationality: United States
Certifications:
- National Judge
- Club Race Officer
0
At the US Sailing best practices forum in Charleston in the spring of 2019, it was expressed that when changing a rule, the best practice is to rewrite the rule with the change incorporated. Also last spring, I took over writing the NOR and SI's for all of our sailing association's events. This practice proved extremely valuable. Lots of changes like, "boat shall blah blah blah. This changes RRS XY.Z." made absolutely no sense when I tried to rewrite the rule with that incorporated.
Unfortunately, this takes up a LOT of space on the page. For instance, setting up a 3 boat starting line, the simple addition of rounding the center boat makes for a lot space.
RRS 30.1 is changed to. “If flag I has been displayed, and any part of a boat’s hull, crew, or equipment is on the course side of the starting line or one of its extensions during the last minute before the starting signal, she shall sail across an extension or around a mid-line boat in place under NOR/SI 15.2.3 or 15.2.4, leaving it to port, before starting.
I received plenty of feedback that while that is proper, it discourages reading of the NOR/SIs because they are too long. I'm looking for some ideas about how to make this change without taking up so much room, but making it proper in the context of the rule. When you add language to the end of the rule, it is easy to say, "Rule 41 is appended with......" in the middle of the rule, it is harder to do something simple. I think the best wording would:
A. Be simple
B. Be understood without opening a rule book
C. Stand up to the test of ,"How did this wording fit into the existing language of the rule?"
Thanks!
Unfortunately, this takes up a LOT of space on the page. For instance, setting up a 3 boat starting line, the simple addition of rounding the center boat makes for a lot space.
RRS 30.1 is changed to. “If flag I has been displayed, and any part of a boat’s hull, crew, or equipment is on the course side of the starting line or one of its extensions during the last minute before the starting signal, she shall sail across an extension or around a mid-line boat in place under NOR/SI 15.2.3 or 15.2.4, leaving it to port, before starting.
I received plenty of feedback that while that is proper, it discourages reading of the NOR/SIs because they are too long. I'm looking for some ideas about how to make this change without taking up so much room, but making it proper in the context of the rule. When you add language to the end of the rule, it is easy to say, "Rule 41 is appended with......" in the middle of the rule, it is harder to do something simple. I think the best wording would:
A. Be simple
B. Be understood without opening a rule book
C. Stand up to the test of ,"How did this wording fit into the existing language of the rule?"
Thanks!
Comments
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Except word it as clearly an additional remedy to 30.1!
Even though it’s long I prefer the entire rule (or the entire sentence within the rule [from J. Christman's later comment]). What takes longer for the competition?
I vote, take the space. This also ensures the RC has thought through the implementation and implications of the change.
For our Club SIs that could have changes over the whole year, what we do is to issue the Notice to Competitors, then incorporate the change into the base Sailing Instructions, so that anyone downloading can get a copy of the SIs incorporating all the changes and then at the end of the year, hopefully we have a set of SIs ready to go for the next season with all the updates incorporated.
This is obviously not applicable for a weekend regatta but works well for SIs that are changed over the period of a full year.
Regards,
Paul
Maybe you would like to play around with something like the following:
Round-an-end-rule
Cheers,
Phil.