Protesting – The Dummy’s Guide

First, you need to be aggrieved about something that someone (another competitor, the Race Committee, or the Protest Committee) did, or failed to do.  If you are not actually aggrieved, well, what’s your purpose?  Showing people you are one of the good guys?  Making an example of someone?  Doing it on behalf of someone else who is too shy?  Nah.

Second, whatever it is that has you bothered, there needs to be a rule about it, usually in the Racing Rules of Sailing, but maybe in the Notice of Race, the Sailing Instructions, the Equipment Rules of Sailing, or the Class Rules.  If there isn’t actually a rule which you think has been broken, probably not a lot that can be done and probably not worth wasting time on it.

OK, you are aggrieved about a rule that you think has been broken.  Take a moment, and check that it isn’t you who has broken the rule.  Are you that knowledgeable about the rules in general?  Do you know how some rules “turn off” certain other rules depending upon the circumstances?  Are you that familiar with how the particular rule is applied in practice?  Have you looked at the RYA and WS cases which illustrate authoritative interpretations of the rule?  If you are in any way unsure, filling in a protest form is not the way to educate yourself.  Leave it alone, and instead seek qualified advice.  The Protest Committee (PC) Chair will always be very pleased to have an informal discussion with you.

Keeping with the big picture, the next issue takes us to the heart of the matter, which is that the PC has to establish the facts of your case.  For a variety of reasons, it is just not going to believe you simply because you say so.  This is the most difficult thing you need to understand, and there is no point going ahead with your protest unless you think there is a (very!) good chance that the PC is going to believe your story rather than the other person’s story.  The PC knows there are (at least!) two sides, and will decide which one it thinks more likely after it has heard evidence from others.

If you are being protested, you need a credible defence or an immediate retirement.  Like a successful protest, a credible defence needs you to be quite confident that you haven’t broken a rule (ask yourself the earlier questions), and to understand that the heart of the hearing is for the PC to find the facts.

Finding the facts in conflicting testimony

In order to find the facts amid inevitably conflicting testimony, the PC is going to quickstep – that’s a four-step dance, by the way – as follows.

Step one.  The PC is going to seek witnesses, and will routinely ask the Race Officer and the appointed Observers of the heat to attend the hearing and give their evidence.  If you can’t find eligible witnesses who can support or corroborate your claims, or if you are intending to contradict the Race Officer or an Observer, you really are wasting everyone’s time.

Step two.  The PC is going to establish who has the burden of proof, and look very closely at their line of argument.  If you were on port and the other boat was on starboard, your story really has to be pretty electric, because it is you who has the problem and who must convince the PC of the truth of your claim.  If it looks like it is you who has the burden of providing proof, think carefully before going ahead with your protest.

Step three.  The PC is going to go back to the last known certain situation.  For example, if you are alleging that the leeward boat luffed up on you, and the other boat claims that, on the contrary, it was you as the windward boat which bore down, the PC will establish and then work from the last situation where you can both agree;  perhaps that 30 seconds earlier you were both sailing parallel and separated by around 2 boat lengths.  In this example, you are toast because the last known certain situation is that you were windward and obliged to keep clear.

Step four.  The PC is going to weigh the credibility of you, your opponent, and all witnesses, and make up its own mind whose testimony to rely upon and whose testimony it will discount.  Just so that you know, this is both nothing personal and everything personal.  You will improve your credibility by showing respect, being accurate and clear, making reasoned claims, demonstrating rules knowledge, and asking questions rather than making statements or speeches.

Only after the PC has found the facts will it figure out what rules applied and what rules, if any, were broken.  The rules it thinks apply may not be the rules you think were relevant, and your thoughts on the matter are worthless.  This stage of the hearing is brainless – once the facts are found, the application of the relevant rules is pretty automatic and completely unsurprising.  The surprise for you will be the facts that the PC finds, and it may well find that it is the other guy’s claims which are the “true” facts, particularly if the other guy had more and better witnesses than you did.

While the details of a hearing are quite tightly regulated by Part 5 of the RRS, you should know that there are really only two key elements of the protest form which must be exactly right, otherwise it will be rejected – the time that you hand it in must not be more than 15 minutes after the end of the heat, and you must have informed the protestee of your intention.  Everything else can be explained in the hearing later.

Dispute resolution service

In RYA seminars and workshops on Judging and Umpiring, there is (I think a majority) view that what we are talking about here is a dispute resolution service on offer from the Protest Committee for someone who is aggrieved. This view is usually associated with Bryan Willis, and it is a view which I most strongly recommend to anyone wondering about this topic. As advice for action and reaction, it runs something like this:

If you are aggrieved, then by all means protest. If you are not aggrieved, then do not protest. This is for you alone; there is no requirement that you must be aggrieved if any rule is broken.

If you protest and the other party is unresponsive (or you are aggrieved by any tardiness or error in their response), then by all means take your dispute to a knowledgeable group who will be able to help you resolve it. Again, this is your decision; there is no requirement that you must take your grievance to a dispute resolution service.

BTW, the dispute resolution service on offer is provided by humans who from time to time may not get it completely right. They also may, inexplicably, find you at fault.

And also BTW, while the Race Committee is more and more likely to be aggrieved at rules infractions the more significant and important the event, there is no obligation upon it that it shall always be aggrieved, nor that it must call upon the dispute resolution service if it is.

Morality and playing the game

Many competitors know the rules, but are unsure of whether they should be aggrieved, whether they should protest, whether they should notice any rule infractions by others, whether they should notice any of their own rule infractions, whether they should take their penalty regardless of any observer call, and whether they should take their penalty regardless of any protest.  This is the domain of morality!  We may note RRS 2, that a boat shall compete sportingly and fairly, and RRS 3, that a boat accepts the rules.

The moral issues are two-fold -- first, what should a competitor do when they see someone else break a rule, and second, what should a competitor do about their own rule-breaking.

At one end of the moral spectrum, a zealot would scrupulously protest every rule infraction by anyone else, and at the other end a laissez-faire competitor would leave it completely up to the other person to take their penalty or not as they saw fit.

Similarly, at one end, a scrupulous competitor would take an immediate and un-prompted penalty every time they infringed, and at the other end a psychopath would never take any penalty at all and would only ever have a penalty imposed by a protest hearing.

If there is one thing we know about morality, it is that what a person might think is the right thing to do is completely contextual.  Is the event a fun club event, or a world championship?  Is the infringer your best friend or sworn enemy?  Are you trying to crush the opposition or be on everyone's Xmas card list?  Do you follow the ‘Golden Rule’ – do as you would be done by – or the exploiter’s rule – take what you can when you can?  It’s over to you to decide how you want to behave….

Radio sailing is a game.  How do you want to be remembered as a player?

©2025 Lester Gilbert