Accelerating at the start - playing devil's advocate

I've heard from several top college sailing coaches including Ken Legler and Jeff Bresnahan that this rule is definitely illegal but you will not get protested for it in college sailing. In regular sailing I believe the rule is also illegal and I've heard cases of people getting protested for it, although you see it all the time at top regattas so I'm guessing that they'll only protest you if you do it an excessive amount.
 
College sailing and a lot of junior programs incourage kinetics. You can tell at most open Laser evnets the folks moving around in the boat the most are of college age or younger. However, I've never seen or heard of anyone getting called down for a few pumps off the starting line.
 
Well.... my 2 cents...

If you're in the conditions described, light - medium, i would expect that while sitting on the line in a "close to head to wind" position, there's no heeling effect on the boat so your weight will be in the center? Then, as you scull pushing the bow off the wind, the sail will fill providing a heeling effect driving the roll to leeward. If you do not move your weight immediately, the boat will roll away from the wind. If you just "delay" your reactions then you get the desired effect. I believe that this would be allowed as there was only one body movement which was to counteract the heeling motion of the wind albeit a few seconds late.

I'm pretty confident that's what I do and I don't think it's cheating. If I see someone physically move into the boat to initiate the roll to leeward and then back out to windward to bring it flat, I'd have words with them. If they did it repeatedly, I'd have no issues protesting them.

As for the kinetics discussion.... I'm not master age yet (coming up sooner than i want though) and I don't want kinetics. And it's not because I'm unfit, I'm pretty much the opposite, but i just don't want sailing to degenerate into windsurfing.
 
Ok, so I definately agree that kinetics are often used unfairly, but what can one do about it? I don't want to continuously protest a person at the line for rolling hard because I am out there mainly to enjoy myself. However, there is no way to compete with someone at the start who throws a huge roll to accelerate. Should the rules be more strict? I kinda feel that there is not much we can do except roll as well.
 
OK, time to be the umpire

Anybody see any rule 42 violations ?
 

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184130 do your turns!

Look at the guy in the red boat, 159047 looking over at 184130 after he did that HUGE pump! Wonder what he's saying?
 
Would your opinion change if he had been heeled like that for 20 seconds (It's a way to protect your hole) why or why not ?

What about if the pic before the 1st showed 184130 tacking and these two pics were the rest of his tack ?

What about 180533 (a few boats to the right) ?
 
I didn't read this whole thread (or any of it) because it would give me a head ache..But as an observor of starts at the RMOCR this past winter, judges were real quick with the flags pre-start for sculling and excessive rolling..
 
Would your opinion change if he had been heeled like that for 20 seconds (It's a way to protect your hole) why or why not ?

What about if the pic before the 1st showed 184130 tacking and these two pics were the rest of his tack ?

What about 180533 (a few boats to the right) ?

LAy your boat on its side to protect a leeward hole? Never seen that done on purpose.

I don't see room for him to have tacked in there, but if he had it's clear he gained more speed coming out of the tack than he had when he went in. He gained at least a half a boat length on the red boat when he came out of the tack. That's a 42 violation.

The other boats? Some are moving, but nothing like that guy.
 
Ya know when yer pumping-
Interesting story-I was racing with an old retired guy in the middle who knew my boat real well- well, we're racing, and he was a great coach-I mean great-he knew it all. So we're rounding a mark, and a guy fouls me bad. Well Bill gets very upset. He said, "This is Corinthian sailing!" And he didn't explain, and the race took over the conversation, but I learned something that day.
 
Ok, by now most people should have received their latest issue of The Laser Sailor where this situation was addressed in the Q&A with Bill O'Hara.

If, after having read either of the articles in TLS (Bill's or the companion article on judging by Bob Bowden - Rob's dad!) people have further questions then please pass them along to us. We can do a series of follow up questions for the next issue.

Tracy
 

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