If it’s not written, it’s not required

The Case Book for 2025-2028 complements The Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS) and provides details on the application of the rules. Here’s Case 32:

This situation clarifies how a competitor is entitled to look exclusively to the Notice of Race or to written Sailing Instructions for all details relating to sailing the course.

Facts
The Sailing Instructions for the event included the following:
1. All races will be sailed under The Racing Rules of Sailing except as modified below.
2. A briefing will be held in the club room 60 minutes before the start of the first race each day.
3. Shortened Course will be signaled by two guns and raising of flag S and the class flag. Boats in that class will round the mark about to be rounded by the leading boat and go straight to the finishing line. This Sailing Instructions changes rule 32.2.

The Sailing Instructions did not include any statement about the direction in which boats were required to cross the finishing line. However, at one of the briefings, the race officer attempted to clarify the phrase ‘go straight to the finishing line’ in item 3 by stating that when the course was shortened, all boats should cross the finishing line in a windward direction.

This would ensure that all classes, some of which might be finishing from different marks, would finish in the same direction even if that were not the direction of the course from the mark at which the course was shortened.

Subsequently, a race was shortened. Six boats, which had not attended the briefing, followed the written sailing instructions and crossed the finishing line from the course side of the line. To cross the line from its course side, it was necessary for those boats to cross while sailing downwind.

The six boats were recorded as not finishing, and they requested redress. The boats alleged that the race committee had improperly changed the direction of the Finish and had failed to follow the requirements of rule 90.2(c).

The protest committee upheld their requests for redress on the grounds they had cited, and it decided that the appropriate and fair form of redress was to score all the boats in the race in the order they crossed the finishing line.

The race committee appealed to the national authority, asserting that the briefing sessions were a numbered part of the Sailing Instructions, all competitors should have attended, and the briefings constituted a procedure for giving oral instructions. Also, it argued that the Sailing Instructions were not changed but merely clarified by the race officer as to what the words ‘go straight to the finishing line’ meant.

Decision – Appeal dismissed
The definition Finish permits the Sailing Instructions to change ‘the direction in which boats are required to cross the finishing line to finish.’ However, the Sailing Instructions for the event did not do so.

If the race committee had wanted to change the direction in which boats were required to cross the finishing line when the course was shortened, it would have had to clearly state this in the Sailing Instructions.

The remarks of the race officer amounted to more than mere clarification. This is borne out by the fact that the boats that did not attend the briefing acted as they did. Competitors are entitled to look exclusively to the notice of race and the Sailing Instructions, and to any amendments to them, for all particulars of the course, and rule 90.2(c) requires changes to the Sailing Instructions to be in writing.