‘Get your drops in early’. A sentence one might hear from a coach or parent whose sailor has enjoyed a less than spectacular start to a regatta or series. ‘Drops’ of course refers to excluded races under the Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS) or the race documents.

They could be referring to a range of scenarios depending on the race documents, the Racing Rules of Sailing, class preferences, the outcome of a protest or a range of other factors.

Let’s talk about the rulesey bit first. Appendix A of the RRS covers Scoring. Under clause A2.1 Scoring a Series we are told that a boat’s series score will be the total of her race scores excluding her worst score. That’s the default position.

The clause goes on to say that the race documents (Notice of Race or Sailing Instructions) may change this to no exclusions, or two or more exclusions and may include a stepped process where one race is excluded after a certain number of races is completed and a second exclusion kicks in when some more races have been completed.

Typically, one might expect to see one exclusion after say five or six races, two after say eight to 10, and so on. The decision is up to the event organisers and can be any configuration that works for them. 

There are important points relating to series tie breaks that are affected by exclusions, so if you feel that knowing about this is important to you please read Appendix A.

Some classes determine that for their most important regattas they will have no exclusions. This means that all the boats have to race hard until the end of the series and it also limits the opportunities for boats with ‘good drops’ to match race boats with ‘worse drops’ to the back of the fleet on the last day.

But why do we have drops at all? Football teams have to count all their results. Lots of things can go wrong in a regatta, too many to list here! Some of those are not under the control of a competitor such as gear breakage, an infringement by another competitor that doesn’t lead to damage or injury (no redress) but parks a boat on a mark for five minutes while it untangles the mark line from the rudder, unkind or inconsistent weather on the course, etc.

Our rule makers determined some time back that there ought to be at least one Get Out of Jail Free card for each boat. Unusually kind of them one might say!

There are some circumstances where the rule makers didn’t want a boat to get out of jail. Hence the score we sometimes see and hope it never applies to us. DNE. Disqualification Not Excludable.

In most cases a disqualification is treated the same as a DNF, OCS, BFD, UFD, etc. Usually last place plus one point. And if you don’t rack up too many of what the coaches like to call letter scores, you will probably be able to exclude it from your series score. That means you can still win the regatta, even if you have one, two or maybe more letter scores including the occasional DSQ.

With a DNE, it’s not so likely. DNEs are applied where a Protest Committee finds that as well as fouling another boat or boats, or committing some other act warranting disqualification, there is an element of Misconduct (RRS 69) or a breach of Fair Sailing (RRS 2).

Under RRS 69 a Protest Committee has a few options for penalties, including DNE. Under RRS 2 Fair Sailing, the penalty shall be DNE. In other words, serious stuff and Protest Committees don’t apply these penalties lightly. There can be a lot of paperwork!

And there are a couple of ways that you can earn yourself a DNE without even trying. All you have to do is start in a race after a Black Flag general recall when you were one of the boats identified as being over the line when the First Substitute went up (that’s the blue and yellow triangular pennant we use for generals). So read carefully the numbers on the whiteboard at the back of the Race Committee boat.

And just when you thought it was safe to give that mainsheet one more pump along came Appendix P.  Under Appendix P – Special Provisions for Rule 42 (that’s the pumping, rocking, ooching, sculling rule) if you are penalised on-water by an umpire there are a few things you need to know.

If it is your first offence in the regatta you will need to take a Two-Turns penalty. This is sometimes reduced to one turn if the class you sail is slow to turn or the fleet will be over the horizon by the time you have done two tacks and two gybes e.g. foiler Moths, cats, boards. If you ignore the umpire you will be DSQ’d without a hearing. But you can drop that one.

If it is your second offence in the regatta you must promptly retire from that race. If you continue racing guess what? DNE!

Third offence (or more), the penalty is to retire and a DNE straight up. If you don’t retire, it’s DNE for every race in the regatta and possible Misconduct under RRS 69.2. Game over.

All of the above is distilled from the RRS and the various appendices. Worth a read in your spare time and it can all be found at https://www.sailingresources.org.au/class-assoc/racing-rules/.

By Nick Hutton IRO
https://www.sailing.org.au/accreditation-finder/