Bryan Willis - The Rules Book

Dedication

To my mother and father who taught me the first rule I knew

Adlard Coles Nautical

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com

www.adlardcoles.com

This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

ADLARD COLES, ADLARD COLES NAUTICAL and the Buoy logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First edition published by Adlard Coles 1977

Reprinted with amendments 1977 (twice), Reprinted 1978, 1979

Second edition 1981, Reprinted 1984

Third edition 1985, Reprinted 1985

Fourth edition 1989, Reprinted 1989, 1990

Fifth edition published by Adlard Coles Nautical 1993

Sixth edition 1997, Seventh edition 2001

Eighth edition 2005, Ninth edition 2009

Tenth edition 2013, Eleventh edition 2017

Eric Twiname, 1977, 1981

Eric Twiname and Bryan Willis, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2009, 2013, 2017

Rules section World Sailing, 2016

Eric Twiname and Bryan Willis have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

All rights reserved
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No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data has been applied for.

ISBN: 978-1-4729-3620-2 (PB)
ISBN: 978-1-4729-3619-6 (eBook)
ISBN: 978-1-4729-3618-9 (ePDF)

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

Eric Twiname was an active dinghy sailor, a keen team racer and a Laser National Champion. He liked to look at the rules from the competitors point of view. He campaigned successfully to get the turns penalty system into the rulebook (before its introduction, boats had to retire whenever they broke a rule) and hed have been delighted to see that the Turns Penalties became the standard penalty system in the main body of the rules. He also tried, unsuccessfully at the time, to get the order of the rules changed to put the sections of most interest to the competitor at the front of the book. Twenty years later the rules were reorganised almost exactly as he proposed.

Eric wrote regular rules articles in the 1970s which were so popular that he used the same comic-strip style for his famous Rules Book,which he wrote after serving for several years on the Royal Yachting Associations Racing Rules Committee.

It was Eric who persuaded me to join the RYA Racing Rules Committee under the chairmanship of Gerald Sambrooke-Sturgess who, with Greg Bemis from the United States, first proposed a set of international racing rules. Eric would be very pleased to see the dramatically simplified rules that came into effect in 1997.

Erics tragic death in 1980 meant a great loss both to his friends and to racing sailors everywhere. His Rules Bookhas helped countless helmsmen to grasp the principles of the racing rules, and in making the changes necessary for the book to comply with the current rules, I have been careful not to change Erics unique method of presentation, which is so popular all over the world.