That was fun

Just finished BUSA Match Racing at Queen Mary. With no wind and no racing there was plenty of time for umpire gossip - so since Alan Baser wants more of my cynical attitude here is the latest.

I thought it very amusing that Peter Johnson had had an incident at the World Selection Trials at West Kirby, which was virtually identical to a situation being discussed by Matt Knowles on his Blog. Peter was very unhappy that he had to agree with virtually everything that was said on that blog on April 10th about a tough Black Flag Situation.

The discussion highlighted the often ignored tie break situation in team racing where if the boats are tied the team with first place loses. Since re-sails are not allowed as a result of a rule infringement one needs to be very specific in what penalty you apply or you might find the scorer does something you did not expect. At BUSA, in order to produce a tie, the scorers had to enter equal points but could not have a boat in first place since if they did this the programme defaulted to the tie break.

Tis a complex web these rules!