by Chuck Luscomb » Thu Feb 07, 2013 9:06 am
Fran et al...
Lots of good points in addition to Toms comments. Rick is right, cold hard facts will always win in court. Strict application of the rules works when tempers flare and skippers go to the room. How does a cold rules interpretation help you? Based on the facts you present, all it is going to do is determine who would get a penalty in this case.
How to avoid this situation in the first place since appears that the ROW boat lost control and was not an intentional defending action on his part.
As Rick points out, chatter helps quite a bit as well as thinking ahead and anticipating the outcome.
Weather boat...
If you see the puff coming, the weather boat may have to separate further knowing that EC12's will round up like this when over powered from a beam reach to dead astern. Anticipate that you or the leeward boat will loose control or struggle to keep control. Since in this case you were reaching, the weather boat may try to keep control by easing sails and bearing off to leeward but will need room to execute this. It is quite common in our fleet when sailing in puffy conditions, skippers tend to widen the gap between boats for just this reason.
ROW or Leeward boat...
Although in court, you may win, when you loose control you will loose. The real trick is keeping control. In this case, you lost control and hit the weather boat. If he was on his game and kept clear, you would have been passed by him while you fight to get the bow back down. Who knows who else would have passed you.
What you can do to keep control...
Make sure your equipment is working correctly and you have full rudder travel. Most rudder servos can be a bit anemic in puffy winds. I use a feature called "offset levers" which helps the servo in wider helm angles by using lever lengths to improve power.
Ease your sails while you head dead down wind. Takes the pressure off the rudder and allows the boat to respond. If you don't ease your sails, your turn will be sluggish and may be too late. Once there, small rudder movements to keep the bow dead down wind. If you apply too much rudder, it will act like a brake and force you into a round up faster.
Hope this helps Fran,
Chuck
USA 84 "SECRET"