Breaking of ties in HMS 2007

[Alfonso]

Usually many SI have their own clause for breaking of ties which may modify the A.8 of the RRS.

The HMS 2007 has its own provision about this issue and modify the SI no matter what they say.

1.6 Exception to Sailing Instructions. Breaking of Ties.
When a tie between two or more boats is to be broken in Race 2 or following races, Race 1 scores shall be excluded.

The RRS allow the SI to modify some of their rules but not the HMS. In the current situation the fact is that the HMS is modifying the RRS and I wonder if this is “legal” or the SI should include in their clause for breaking of ties the prescription of the HMS, so there is no contradiction between HMS and the SI.

[Lester]

I think that there are two approaches to ensuring proper integration between HMS and SIs. One way is to construct SIs which treats HMS as a separate set of rules. Another way is to make HMS a part of the SIs.

At present, IOMICA SIs take the first approach, but do not always correctly connect the HMS rules with the RRS rules and show where they are changed. Part of the difficulty with this approach is that HMS as such cannot be changed; if changes are desired, they must be made in the SIs and referenced to specific HMS paragraphs. And the difficulty with *that*, as you see, is that HMS somehow places itself above the SIs, and makes statements about what the SIs can and cannot say.

At almost every International event I attended from 2000 to 2007 I seem to remember one or other Jury member saying that a better way to do the job would probably be to make HMS a part of the SIs. The approach here would be to NOT define 'the rules' as including HMS in the NoR or the SIs. (Certainly, the NoR should mention that racing will be conducted using HMS, but should only define 'rule' as including RRS and SIs along with Class Rules and ERS.) Instead, the SIs would reproduce HMS as an appendix, and relevant paragraphs in the SIs would state the RRS changes and would state that race management will be done as provided in 'Appendix X, HMS'. In this approach, the SIs would be able to change those parts of HMS that it wanted to (perhaps to better define how 19 DNFs should be handled, for example) because it would provide the required version of HMS as an appendix of the SIs. I believe the reason that this approach has not yet been tried seriously is because of Peter's statement elsewhere -- that HMS is 'copyright', and hence permission is required to reproduce it as an appendix. Also, there is considerable value in having HMS as a stand-alone system and able to be employed around the world wherever we race without too much trouble, and this is another reason why this approach has not been seriously tried.

But perhaps the time has come for IOMICA to produce the first set of SIs which integrates all of radio sailing racing into one consistent document...