Why do they protest?

Just back from an Optimist and Laser event in the Med.

We were surprised at the number of protests but what surprised me was why there were not more.

The Jury were on the water to apply Appendix P. On the Optimist start line the boats were inevitably gunwale to gunwale,  yet there was not a single protest for the breeches of rule 11. There were rule 10 protests for incidents on the racecourse but the start was just a row of boats in contact with one another (practically)

I don't know what the solution is - as a jury we could start bringing protests, it would probably be as random as our our rule 42 penalties. Would it improve rule observance? Does it matter? The comment I heard was that the boats are so tough there is never any damage. I just don't know.

The rules take second place to the culture within the class. If these were larger wooden boats I would bet there would be a better gap between them on the start line. - or more protests.