Jiglu: BLOKART-NZ: Discussion: Re: More rules questions.

Hello from your friendly worlds race commitee,

To start on a positive note.

What a great day we had on Sunday!!!!!!

We are so greatful that we had this day, as being only 2 weeks to the worlds, it was the one and only real chance to try out the rules, the new track extensions and fine tune the timing. Weren't the track extensions awesome? Throwing a whole new dimension on our options.

Sure there were some issues on the day, with follow on emails from everyone (too numerous to list) with questions and issues regarding the rules. This is great and is ultimatley how the sport will grow.

We thank for these and please bring on more, so we have time to deal with them before the worlds. The more we can deal with now, the less questions on the day and faster we can all get racing!

We will be meeting. directly or indrectly in the next day or so and will come back with answers. which in some cases may include some fine tuning to the posted ESRR (Event Specific Racing Rules).

For example;

The big one, rule E4 will be reworded to read "When blokarts are on opposite tacks, a competitor must give way to another competitor who is on their right".

This "right hand rule" will apply in most situations, but there will be some exceptions such as 'mark roundings'.

We are still working on that and some others.

Regards for now,

The Race Committee

----- Original Message -----
From: trevor pretty
To: ...
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 8:00 PM
Subject: [blokart] More rules questions.

Worlds Rules

E 10. When a blokart acquires right of way, it shall initially give the other blokart room to keep clear,
unless it acquires right of way because of the other actions.

IBRA Rules

E.10 When a blokart acquires right of way, it shall initially give the other blokart room to keep
clear, unless it acquires right of way because of the other's actions

So we've lost the "'s" changing the meaning and there is too many "it"s in here. I read this:

E.10 When a blokart (blokart A) acquires right of way, it (blokart A) shall initially give the other blokart (blokart B) room to keep clear, unless it (blokat A) acquires right of way because of the other's (blokart B) actions.

The subject of this sentence is blokart A, and blokart A already has right of way. What is this rule trying to say? It's ambiguous to say the least.

I think it is trying to say...

E.10 When a blokart (blokart A) acquires right of way, it (blokart A) shall initially give the other blokart (blokart B) room to keep clear, unless it (blokat B) acquires right of way because of the other's (blokart A) subseqent actions.

Even making this change it's not clear. What about if blokart B aquires the right of way due to it's actions?

Why do we need the whole "unless clause"? The rule is very clear without it.

I may be seeming to be pedantic, but I've sailed for many years in the UK and ran a few protest committees. The wording of the rules in a protest will be picked apart, they must be clear and unambiguous, there must be no "wriggle room". If this is a "World" event and we want Blokarting to be taken seriously as a sport, the rules have to be clear. The IRBA rules are not great, but removing some of them has made the the rules for the World event confusing and ambiguous. For Example: The reason for the port/starboard E4 rule (or give way to the right as an alternative), is it breaks the deadlock of who is "ahead". In the current posted rules with E4 missing, if it is not clear who is ahead, nobody has the right of way, which means there are no rules governing what action we are supposed to take in these situations, to comply with rule E9. This makes E9 unworkable. It is also DANGEROUS!

You cannot say on a track that you would never have a cross over situation, the wind has only got to shift and we could easily be tacking to a mark. There is quite a large expanse of seal now and yesterday we sailed on port after the start line and then tacked over to starboard to round the first mark. Under the current Worlds rules somebody tacking over onto starboard could easily be in the situation where they would not be "ahead" of somebody comming up faster than them at their imaginary cross over point. What are they supposed to do?

Trevor
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