Doing circles is slow

Everybody has an opinion about what the rules should be. Yesterday I posted the "automatic translation" version, whereby the rules went from English to Russian to Japanese to Hungarian to Portuguese to Dutch and back to English, resulting in Brands instead of Marks. (We are it wrong...)

(And, whatever you do, don't, I repeat, do not click on the link provided in that post. You will be sorry if you do)

Today we have a simplified version, written in 2002 by Hugh Elliot from the USA. I met Hugh at my IJ seminar back in 2004. We keep in touch on an irregular basis and he comments on my LTW scribblings now and then. He still writes, a little more elaborate, on his blog called Thoughts Not Slogans. I liked this post in particular: Thought for the Day. But then I've read THHGTTG.

For now, back to Hugh's beginning - at that time he hadn't progressed to rule 42:

Hugh’s Rules of Sailboat Racing

For

Kids and Small Boat Tacticians

(With help from Fred Hagedorn
US SAILING Olympic Sailing Committee Chairman 2001 - 2004)

1. Don’t hit other boats. Collisions are slow and arguments are slower.
2. Keep out of the way of boats in front of you.
3. Port tack boat usually has to stay out of the way of everyone else.
4. Windward boats must stay away from leeward boats.
5. The inside boat gets to go round the mark first.
6. Don’t hit marks. Doing circles is slow.
7. Don’t hit the committee boat. First, it is a mark (see Rule 6) and second, it really makes them mad.
8. Nothing good ever happens on a layline.
9. The port tack layline is a very ugly place.
10. Control your own destiny: stay out of the Protest Room. Protest Committees are uncontrollable: with a 100% solid case, you have a 50% chance of being DSQ

  
I'm not 100% sure what to make of the last one - safe it to say he has learned a lot ...... at that seminar :-)

Thanks Hugh!