Rescuing a disabled boat, defining the control area

[Lester]

There are some interesting wrinkles introduced by the rule changes on control areas and on rescue when disabled.

We know that, under the new rules, if you receive help from the rescue boat (or anyone else not involved in your entanglement) you must retire, and if you continue racing you will be protested and will likely earn a DSQ (E4.2).

While racing, you must remain in the designated control area. Helpfully, we now know that if the control area is not specified, then it is unrestricted (E3.1).

Those of you with a long memory may recall that "control area" was introduced into the 2001 RRS in order to prevent competitors, for example, swimming out to their boats to untangle them. At that time, the rules then provided for rescue by the rescue boat, and the eagle-eyed will recall that such rescue was allowed *only* by the rescue boat. Then something funny happened to the 2009 RRS -- the word "only" disappeared. As a result, the good folks making up the new rules did not realise that, originally, the control area and rescue boat business was intended to prevent competitors fouling up the racing for others as they swam to and from their boats...

The end result is that, under the new rules, if the control area is not specified, you can now go back to swimming out to your boat to disentangle it. Perhaps another unintended consequence of the rule changes...

[Bruce Andersen]

anyone interested in fouling Lester's boat to see him swim out in his skivvies?

the rule may have opened the door for unintended side effects, the most prominent of which is that mental image now burned into my cortex!