By Morgan Stinemetz
guage what the RRS has already explained. And because the Racing Rules of Sailing change every few years or so, it is impossible to recall and be up to date on all the minutiae involved. So that’s why a team of ‘experts’ has established a cottage industry of sorts, explaining the new nuances and how they differ from the old nuances, which one can barely remember anyway. “Races are won and lost, some of the time, not on the racecourse but in a protest hearing, wherein both aggrieved parties get to state their case in front of supposedly knowledgeable sailors.” “That’s the way it has been for a long time,” I offered. “Doesn’t make it right,” groused Bubba. “Why not?” “Because the people in the protest hearing, the jury, so to speak, often know less about the rules than the sailors involved in a dispute over a rules infraction. And some of them are biased. If one of their own hometown buddies is involved and the other party is from out of town, there’s a crappy tendency to decide in favor of the hometown guy,” Bubba declared. “Can you explain that?” “Sure,” replied Bubba. “I was on a race from Fort Lauderdale to Key West once years ago. A boat in another class missed one of the buoys in the Key West Channel. It was a green buoy and was supposed to be kept to port, but this boat, which was ahead of us, passed the mark on the wrong side. The skipper of the boat I was on filed a protest about the boat, which was not in our class. In the protest
hearing the people on the boat that missed the mark lied and then laughed about it afterward. The protest committee, about 11 months later, re-heard the protest. They decided that because the boat I was on flew a protest flag from the starboard spreader instead of the backstay, the protest was disallowed. The protest committee, many of them buddies of the owner of the boat that was protested, never addressed the core issue. They threw out our protest on a technical point. Game over. They just did it 11 months after the fact.” “So are you saying then that a boat that broke the rules got to keep its score?” “You’re damn right I am,” Bubba snapped. “The boat was awarded first place in its class and received a trophy. The only recompense we got was that for an entire year the boat that was awarded first place had an asterisk next to its finish, signifying that its first-place score was subject to change, pending protest.” “What’s the point?” I asked. “The point is that sports like basketball, tennis, baseball and football all have solid rules that no one can arbitrarily change. Sailing, on the other hand, allows changes to the rules by the organizing authority, the club that sponsors the race. That’s insane. And that is also why we have people who need to interpret, all over again, the rules for sailors who are both literate enough and smart enough to own and race their own boats,” Bubba explained. The more Bubba talked, the more excited he became. And the more excited he became, the louder his voice got. Ultimately, one of the female librarians tiptoed over and tapped him on the shoulder and told him to cut out the noise. Bubba, still surrounded by books about the Racing Rules of Sailing, and still somewhat exercised, asked her if she wanted her lights punched out. If Bubba and I want to meet in a library again within the next year or so, it will have to be in another county.
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