Waiting and Redress

The final races for the City of Marseille Trophy are on hold just now as the breeze on the Rade Sud tops 28 knots in the gusts at the moment, with a big sea running . At best that is marginal for racing - we had around about that wind strength during Race 8 yesterday - but the forecasters seem to concur that it will not drop out until later in the afternoon.
The prescriptions state that there should be no race starting after 1500hrs on the last day of any Audi MedCup regatta.

Perhaps USA-17 are already home and dry, winning their only regatta on both their debut on and departure from the 2008 Audi MedCup Circuit. USA-17 is reported to be for sale to the highest bidder as the team concentrate their efforts as Challengers for the 33rd America’s Cup.
“This has been an awesome race track, really interesting with plenty of breeze, but the good thing as well is that it has always been changing with the shifts, so there has never been a ‘must-have’ side of the course, it has been about playing the shifts all the time.” USA-17’s helm and co-strategist James Spithill (FRA).

After considerable deliberation the Jury have announced their decision regarding the requests for redress by the boats which had to retire from the Coastal Race after they were damaged at, or approaching Mark 1, the first windward mark.

The substantial difference, which is causing some aggravation to the crew of Mutua Madrilena (CHI) in particular, is that Matador have been granted redress for the Coastal Race based on their position passing that first mark of the course, second, and then average points for yesterday’s two windward leeward races, while Mutua Madrilena, and CXG Caixa Galicia (CXG) have been scored average points for the coastal race and for the windward-leeward races, on the basis that they had not yet established a clear position in the fleet because they had not yet passed a fixed mark of the course.

“For Mutua Madrilena and Caixa Galicia they had no result of any kind in the coastal race, because they had not yet reached a mark of the course.” explains Michael Clough (GBR), who spoke for the Jury,

"Mutua Madrilena and Caixa therefore got the same type of average for the Coastal race."

"The reason it took so long is that we had the time, once we had got all the protests over, to study if the fact that three boats had been taken out of the racing, that is the number of boats competing was no longer 14 but 11 - whether there was some way of bringing a compensation factor in to it, because the boats remaining in the race, the last boats will all be three boats further up, and so on. We looked at this from every angle and there was no fair way of doing. The problem is that if the last three boats of the regatta drop out due to damage then that is not going to make much difference to the boats in front of them, but if the first three boats drop out with damage then everybody moves up, and then there is every combination between the two, so it was just far too difficult to make something fairer than what already existed in the rule book.”