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Coaches, How Well Do Your Sailors Know The Rules? How Well Do You?

Sometimes we forget to put ourselves at their level



Answer the following questions:

 If a boat is disqualified under the Fair Sailing Rule, she may either be disqualified or issued a disqualification that is not excludable

 There are situations when a starboard tack boat must keep clear of a port tack boat

 When the Right of Way (ROW) changes from one boat to another, the new ROW boat must initially give the other boat room to keep clear in all circumstances.

 In regular fleet racing, Rule 18 does not apply until both boats reach the three boat-length zone around a mark.

 After a boat completes a tack inside the zone at the windward mark, she will be penalized if she causes another boat to alter course.

 The Race Committee may move a starting mark after the warning signal.

 If you foul another boat two minutes before you start, you must take your two turn penalty after the starting signal

 At a mark  but before the first boat rounds to begin the next leg, the RC may change the length of the next leg.

 When a close hauled boat hails for room  to tack at an obstruction, the hailed boat must tack as soon as possible

 A boat that is less than 6 meters long (20 feet) does not need to display a protest flag in order to file a valid protest.

The term overlap applies only to boats on the same tack

 It is possible for a boat to have proper course before she actually starts the race

 When two boats are overlapped, Windward (W) must keep clear of Leeward (L) . As long as L can keep steering a straight course without contact, then W is keeping clear.

 A boat is considered to be racing from her warning signal until she finishes. 

 A boat that is tacking and has just turned beyond head to wind is “on a tack”

You feel like you got them all? Did I trip you up? Don't sweat it if you didn't get them all, because it was an open book quiz! Which is the point, because sometimes as coaches we don't cover the part of teaching where you let sailors put the 2 and 2 together. Remember, especially when it comes to the rules, our job is to give them the framework where they get to do the critical thinking part of sailing. Sometimes its easier to do the thinking for them, but if the sailor is dependent on you for everything, including reasoning out situations involving rule infractions/protests - you are not doing your job.

NO ROOM!


But that's not to say you can't flip this on them! Use this rules quiz on your sailors and see how well they understand the rules - have them give you their answers and the rule it relates to - answer key is in the comments!

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