Editor’s Note: This article was first published in the September, 2012, issue of The Telltale.
Every year, a significant percentage of protests are deemed invalid, and the protest hearing is over before it’s really even begun. That’s a shame, because the protest may have been quite legitimate; the protestee may have blatantly broken a rule, but the evidence will never get heard, and the protestee will not be disqualified.
To ensure the validity of a protest, a boat intending to protest must do several things, per RRS 61. First, the boat “shall inform the other boat at the first reasonable opportunity”, which involves hailing the word “Protest” immediately. Secondly, the protesting boat shall “conspicuously display a red flag at the first reasonable opportunity”. Failure to comply with this second requirement is by far the most common reason for protests being deemed invalid. While the rule uses the term “first reasonable opportunity”, this has been interpreted by Appeals Committees to mean “immediately”. I.e. in almost all situations, the flag should be displayed in less than 30 seconds, and usually it should be displayed in less than 10 seconds. (See CYA Appeal #106.) If a crew member has to go down below to look for the flag, then that’s probably too long.
Finally, the protest must be submitted in writing within the time limit. Of course, there are exceptions and qualifications to the above statements — please read RRS 61 in its entirety, before you get involved in your first protest.
At the beginning of a protest hearing, the first order of business is to ensure the validity of the protest. That is quite different from the primary objective of the hearing, which is to determine whether the protest has merit, and whether one or more boats broke a rule or rules. But unfortunately, roughly a third of the protests submitted in Ottawa are deemed invalid, and never proceed further, because the protester failed to meet one or more of the above conditions. That is always most regrettable, because nothing gets resolved, the merit of the protest is not considered, and nobody learns anything, other than about the content of RRS 61.
Hugh Morrin
Protest Coordinator
