I was recently involved in a race in which keel boats were required to round a coordinate a number of times. Not an actual physical Mark. This has me wondering. Given the definition of room and the meaning of touch. Is rule 18 applicable or enforceable in any practical way?
This is an interesting question as there is no mark on the water. I would be keen to know how the scenario pans out in such a case wrt rule 18.
www.sailing.org/inside-world-sailing/rules-regulations/racingrules/
https://www.sailing.org/tools/documents/OC13bRacingAroundWaypoints-%5B19446%5D.pdf
It would be great if the OP could provide a copy of the regatta documents (NoR/SI) which could be quite helpful, or not.
The Appx does not define a min decimal-depth (sig-fig) for WGS84 location. Therefore, the size of the location, depends upon the resolution.
Since we have a relative measure in the zone of 3 BL's, the zone's location needs to be specified to something substantially less than 1 BL for it to be usefully determined.
The Mark 3 will be the coordinate....
APP WP was not invoked. I am happy that at least this sorts out the issue of wether it is possible to touch a coordinate. There is still the matter of given that GPS location is accurate to between 2-8 m 95% of the time ( according to WS Judges Manual). How can one decide if room was given or when the zone was reached.
If I say something is 1 km away ... I'm describing something that has a less than 1/2km location resolution.
Add a decimal .. 1.0km ... now it's a 0.05 location resolution.
If a location wants to be resolved for a 3 BL zone ... and 1 BL is 10-20m ... then the location should be located signicantly less than 10m. 1-2m should be fine ... so 5 decimal places.
Mr. Hubbll raises a good point.
In direct response to the original post by Mr. Dalli: Yes, I do believe Rule 18 can be applied successfully. Let's assume there is an overlap as the two boats enter the zone around a GPS waypoint. The inside boat, using their GPS, asks for Room. The outside boat shall then provide Room, and if she feels that the inside boat was not entitled to Room she will Protest. If there is a debate, it gets sorted out in a protest hearing.
However, during that hearing various key facts need to be discovered. An important one will be: there are two types of GPS available today. The relevant points are covered in the quote below from this source: https://rtkdata.com/blog/rtk-vs-gps-accuracy-2026/
"RTK vs GPS Key differences
At this time both "RTK GPS" and "standard GPS" are in use aboard various competing boats. As is stated above, the RTK GPS supports accuracy of 1-2 centimeters, while the standard GPS accuracy is 3-10 meters. During any hearing, it would be wise to discover exactly which sorts of GPS was being used and consider this when trying to determine the Room to which the inside boat was entitled.
At this time both GPS and RTK GPS are being used within the commercial starting systems of Vakaros and Velocitek respectively, to provide a more accurate method of determining OCS at the start of a race. That has brought up the obvious question, is the position accurate enough. Extensive testing over the last three years has shown that the 1-2 centimeter accuracy of RTK GPS is better than human visual line sighting, while the regular GPS is not.
As a result, Rule 18 will work just fine at the 1-2 centimeter accuracy of RTK GPS, at least as well as humans rounding a visible mark. It will be more difficult to resolve the 3-10 meter accuracy during a mark rounding for regular GPS. The most difficult situation will be if the two boats have different types of GPSs.