Shortening Course

Paul Pascoe, 2/4/2026

During the last twilight race of the series on Wednesday, a shortened course was signalled from the Tower and there was some confusion about how to finish correctly.

The full course to be sailed was Start-1-6-5-Finish with all marks left to starboard. So the question is “if the normal course was to leave number 6 to starboard, to finish with a shorten course flag flying do you still have to leave number 6 to starboard and do a hook turn finish or do you sail straight through the finish line?”

And the answer is to finish in the direction from the last mark.

Racing Rule 32.2: “To shorten the course, the race committee shall display flag S with two sounds before the first boat crosses the finishing line. If the course is shortened, the finishing line shall be, at a rounding mark, between the mark and a staff displaying flag S ….”

And the definition of Finish in part is “A boat finishes when, after her starting signal, any part of her hull crosses the finishing line from the course side …”, i.e. in the direction from the last mark.

In the shorten course rule there is no required side for the S flag to be displayed but while it is technically correct to put the S flag on either side of the mark in question, it is not good practice to signal from the “non normal passing side” when in open waters.

For example, the normal method of shortening course at a weather mark with the mark to be rounded to port would be:

However, it is also technically correct to do the following:

With an immoveable Tower, there isn’t the option, hence the finish on the “non normal passing” side of number 6.

Rounding vs Passing Mark

The other issue regarding last Wednesday’s race is that it is technically not allowable in the rules to shorten course when sailing downwind past number 6 in this particular course. The reason is a bit technical but in a nutshell:

• There are two types of marks in the rules – rounding and passing marks
• In simple terms, rounding marks are marks you generally round closely (e.g. 1 & 5), while passing marks you just have to pass on the correct side and can be passed some distance from the mark (see the first diagram in this article)
• To be classified as a rounding mark, it has to be specifically named in the SIs that the mark is a rounding mark (which number 6 is not in the SIs for this course).
• Therefore number 6 is a passing mark in the course sailed last Wednesday
• Number 6 is included in the courses to make sure that boats aren’t sailing both upwind and downwind through the finish line at the same time.
• As per the rules, the Race Committee can only shorten course at a rounding mark

However, the RO was trying to get a race finish given the boats were not going to finish in time if they were to sail the full course. Though technically not correct to shorten as they did, being a club twilight race (i.e. no sheep stations), the RO decided to bend the rules a little to give sailors a race and not have it time out given the shorter hours of daylight saving.

Subsequent to the race there was a protest heard on Thursday, and the decision was that “no boats finished” as per the rules, but there is a Case 32 that allows the Protest Committee to award redress in situations such as this, and all boats in the race were awarded redress by the Protest Committee with their finish times as recorded originally by the RC.

For details of the protest, see:https://sailingresults.net/sa/protest/protest.aspx?ID=3&PID=1407