To our surprise this morning the committee had reinstated the fleet’s positions. When we asked why we were told that the race committee was ducking out of it’s responsibility to enforce the rule and therefore we sould have to protest the whole fleet. There was a split amoungst the crew of whether we should pursue the protest. My feeling is that rules are rules – I have myself lost a position due to not filing in time at Cowes Week. I was two minutes late after fighting a spring tide of 4 knots in the Solent with an outboard engine which cracked open the stern allowing water to come aboard despite an appeal I did not receive my position back. The rest of the fleet had simply not read the Sailng Instructions.

The Trades eased to between 14 and 16 knots and we only had one breakage today when the winch stopped working upwind. I took it apart on the downwind leg to find that the brand new springs in the port primary were not working. I replaced them with old springs and did not have a problem for the rest of the regatta. Irrational Again protested us for a mark rounding – they came in on the starboard layline after over standing and we came in on port. We won the protest and were not disqualified. The owner had to stay home due to a back injury so we took on his mainsheet trimmer who lived in Honolulu.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of yelling on the dock about the general protest, which was very distasteful. The other crews felt we were being unsportsmanlike and suggested that this was teh only way we could win trophies. After another bad set of results and a crew vote, we decided to withdraw our protest over the declaration issue. When we went to the jury to withdraw our protest we were told it was not possible, as we would win the protest as it as based on undeniable fact. We finally were allowed to withdraw it after much persuasion and teh race director was ”dressed down’ by the international jury for not enforcing the rules. We were disappointed with this lack of professionalism in an international event and had I been in the other crew’s position I would have requested to be withdrawn from the results, as I had obviously not followed the rules.