Proposed change to Melbourne Osaka NOR

At the briefing last night, Donald Fraser discussed with competitors a proposal to change the Notice of Race.

The discussion was as follows:

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The Organising Authority would like to make a change to the Notice or Race in order to make what we hope will be a potentially fairer race to all competitors. However, we cannot make the change without the approval of all competitors and we therefore request that you confirm if you are in favour or not of the change.

The proposed change is as follows:

Change to NOR 1.4

The following paragraph:

"Any boats determined to have received outside assistance shall have a penalty of 30% added to their elapsed time."

 is changed to read:

 "Any boats determined to have received outside assistance shall have a penalty of 30% added to their elapsed time or other penalty at the discretion of the Jury"

The reason for this change is to allow the Jury to decide that if the outside assistance is minor and unforseen, then the Jury has the right to award a penalty less than 30%. At the briefing there was discussion between the competitors, the organising authority and the Jury Chairman about this change. It was generally felt that if a boat stopped and another person came on to the boat to make repairs, that this constituted significant outside assistance and should attract the full 30% penalty. If it were something such as stopping to pick up a fuse for an HF radio then something more like a 5% penalty would be warranted. None of these discussions are binding on the Jury, but they did provide feedback to the Jury on what penalties the competitors felt were appropriate.

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At the briefing session, the chair of the Melbourne Osaka Jury, Paul Pascoe answered questions from the attendees.

To change a Notice of Race after it has been submitted required unanimous approval of all competitors.  The attendees at the meeting all agreed, and now ORCV are contacting the vessels already departed ( as well as Gusto due to start later this week) to seek their opinion.

 We shall confirm on this website if the change is formalised.

 Donald Fraser

24/3/2013