There was a protest the other night, and the protestor now wants to
withdraw the protest. To the best of my knowledge, it was a
port-starboard with no contact (and thus no damage or injury on either
boat). Apparantly the race committee is refusing to allow the protest
to be withdrawn.

RRS 63.1 says, "...The protest committee shall hear all protests and
requests for redress that have been delivered to the race office
unless it allows a protest or request to be withdrawn.". Is there any
guidance for when it would be appropriate for the PC to refuse to
allow a protest to be withdrawn?

Hi Roy,

I observe that nobody has come forth with a definitive answer, so I will
offer my opinion.

I cannot find any particular guidance on this issue. There is apparently
nothing in the rule book or the appeals book.

There are only two classes of reasons why someone would want to withdraw
a protest.

1) Perhaps the protest was in error because the protester did not
understand the rules or their correct application.

2) The incident happened, and a rule was broken, but the protester no
longer wants to "press charges". This could be for any number of reasons.

In the first case it is likely that the protest committee would quickly
agree to throw the case out, with or without a hearing. If the protest
is technically defective then the same throw-out result would occur.

In the second case the protest committee is correct to want to
understand more about the case. The obvious concern would be that the
two parties have made some sort of gentleman's agreement over the
incident. This could take many forms, but in some cases it could lead to
unfair preferential treatment on the race course at some future time.

Fair racing demands that the rules are followed, and there is no
provision for concepts such as, "I'll let you get away with it this
time," or "You owe me one."

The protester and the protestee can most likely kill the protest through
their testimony, but they may need to go through the hearing process.

Regards,
Gene Fuller

Roy Smith wrote:
There was a protest the other night, and the protestor now wants to
withdraw the protest. To the best of my knowledge, it was a
port-starboard with no contact (and thus no damage or injury on either
boat). Apparantly the race committee is refusing to allow the protest
to be withdrawn.

RRS 63.1 says, "...The protest committee shall hear all protests and
requests for redress that have been delivered to the race office
unless it allows a protest or request to be withdrawn.". Is there any
guidance for when it would be appropriate for the PC to refuse to
allow a protest to be withdrawn?

Hi Roy, Gene and suscribers,

You can find at "ISAF Judges Manual 2006" this guide about the case:

9.4 Right to Withdraw a Protest
Withdrawing a protest requires the approval of the Jury. A competitor
may
not automatically withdraw a protest simply by saying so. The jury
should
determine the reason why it is being withdrawn. If foul play is
suspected,
that permission should not be given.

My second question is:
The Protest Committee can initiate a protest based on information from
a valid protest. If they accept to withdraw the protest, can the PC
present a further protest? If

The ISAF Judges Manual 2006 and other interesting publications will be
found at www.sailing.org (under Oficcials/publications)

I didn´t find any other document or info about this.
But still searching.

Regards,
Diego Ravecca

In article .com,
" wrote:

Hi Roy, Gene and suscribers,

You can find at "ISAF Judges Manual 2006" this guide about the case:

9.4 Right to Withdraw a Protest
Withdrawing a protest requires the approval of the Jury. A competitor
may not automatically withdraw a protest simply by saying so. The jury
should determine the reason why it is being withdrawn. If foul play is
suspected, that permission should not be given.


Thanks for the quote, but the preface to the Judges Manual also says:

"This manual is designed and written for ISAF International Judges serving
on international juries, and as the textbook for ISAF International Judge
Seminars. The advice and procedures contained in this book generally
relate to major regattas and championships."

I'm not sure that applies to our local weekday night racing. Still, it
sounds to me like any of the following would be good reasons to allow the
protest to be dropped:

"I talked to my crew and they convinced me I really didn't need to duck"

"I re-read the rules are realize now I misunderstood them"

or even:

"I still think I was fouled, but I've got better things to do than waste a
night in the protest room".

But, if you had reason to believe (i.e. somebody overheard a conversation
at the bar) that a deal was struck:

"If you drop your protest, I'll give you a freebie the next time we're in
the same situation"

or that there was intimidation:

"Hey, Joe, as Commodore, I've got to tell you that it's really not cool to
protest somebody from your own club. Why don't you just drop it for the
good of the club, huh?"

then you should require it to be heard. Sound reasonable?

sometimes if the rule is not in the book it has to be adressed with
"common sense" just drop the protest and move on.....

Roy

In my world, if someone withdraws a protest, everyone draws a sigh of
relief and goes home early. The rules give the committee discretion so
it seems a matter of choice to pro-actively choose to insist on hearing
the protest. There must be a deeper reason that is not hitting the
surface, surely?


Roy Smith wrote:
There was a protest the other night, and the protestor now wants to
withdraw the protest. To the best of my knowledge, it was a
port-starboard with no contact (and thus no damage or injury on either
boat). Apparantly the race committee is refusing to allow the protest
to be withdrawn.

RRS 63.1 says, "...The protest committee shall hear all protests and
requests for redress that have been delivered to the race office
unless it allows a protest or request to be withdrawn.". Is there any
guidance for when it would be appropriate for the PC to refuse to
allow a protest to be withdrawn?

Stephen Page wrote:
In my world, if someone withdraws a protest, everyone draws a sigh of
relief and goes home early. [...]

That's mostly what my world is like too, but fleets vary a lot. (The
PHRF crew that I sail with occasionally talks about five-year-old
protests with a lot of emotion!)

There must be a deeper reason that is not hitting the surface, surely?

Assuming it's all done with at this point, I'd be curious to hear more
about the circumstances and results if it can be aired here. (Roy?)

In article ,
(andrew m. boardman) wrote:

Stephen Page wrote:
In my world, if someone withdraws a protest, everyone draws a sigh of
relief and goes home early. [...]

That's mostly what my world is like too, but fleets vary a lot. (The
PHRF crew that I sail with occasionally talks about five-year-old
protests with a lot of emotion!)

There must be a deeper reason that is not hitting the surface, surely?

Assuming it's all done with at this point, I'd be curious to hear more
about the circumstances and results if it can be aired here. (Roy?)

I honestly don't know more about the circumstances than I did when I made
my original post.

I collected the info I got here, cited the appropriate passages from the
Judges Manual, and sent an email to the guy organizing the protest
committee (we don't have a standing PC, but one of the RC members is in
charge of assembling PCs as needed to handle protests that get submitted).
His response was to thank me for my input and he told me that they were
allowing the protest to be dropped. I'm not sure if that was his decision
or if a PC was actually put together and the PC made that decision, but I
believe it was the latter.

Man, this newsgroup really has withered away, hasn't it? A few years ago,
this would have attracted 10 posts a day for a week. Where has everybody
gone? Over to blogs and Sailing Anarchy?

Roy Smith wrote:
Man, this newsgroup really has withered away, hasn't it?

I dunno, it's always been fairly quiet. I've also been surprised at the
number of people lately I've heard say something like "wow, I'm spending
time on usenet again; SNR has gotten so much better."

Certainly the trolls and bozos seem to have mostly decamped for web forums.