ABSTRACTS BY RULE NUMBER 14  

Section B – General Limitations
Rule 14, Avoiding Contact

CASE 2
If the first of two boats to reach the zone is clear astern when she reaches it and if later the boats are overlapped when the other boat reaches the zone, rule 18.2(a), and not rule 18.2(b), applies. Rule 18.2(a) applies only while boats are overlapped and at least one of them is in the zone.
CASE 7
When, after having been clear astern, a boat becomes overlapped to leeward within two of her hull lengths of the other boat, the windward boat must keep clear, but the leeward boat must initially give the windward boat room to keep clear and must not sail above her proper course.
CASE 11
When boats are overlapped at an obstruction, including an obstruction that is a right-of-way boat, the outside boat must give the inside boat room to pass between her and the obstruction.
CASE 13
Before her starting signal, a leeward boat does not break a rule by sailing a course higher than the windward boat’s course.
CASE 14
When, owing to a difference of opinion about a leeward boat’s proper course, two boats on the same tack converge, the windward boat must keep clear. Two boats on the same leg sailing near one another may have different proper courses.
CASE 23
On a run, rule 19 does not apply to a starboard-tack boat that passes between two port-tack boats ahead of her. Rule 10 requires both port-tack boats to keep clear.
CASE 25
When an inside overlapped windward boat that is entitled to mark-room sails below her proper course while at the mark, she must keep clear of the outside leeward boat, and the outside boat may luff provided that she gives the inside boat room to keep clear.
CASE 26
A right-of-way boat need not act to avoid a collision until it is clear that the other boat is not keeping clear. However, if the right-of-way boat could then have avoided the collision and the collision resulted in damage, she must be penalized under rule 14.
CASE 27
A boat is not required to anticipate that another boat will break a rule. When a boat acquires right of way as a result of her own actions, the other boat is entitled to room to keep clear.
CASE 30
A boat clear astern that is required to keep clear but collides with the boat clear ahead breaks the right-of-way rule that was applicable before the collision occurred. A boat that loses right of way by unintentionally changing tack is nevertheless required to keep clear.
CASE 43
A close-hauled port-tack boat that is sailing parallel and close to an obstruction must keep clear of a boat that has completed her tack to starboard and is approaching on a collision course.
CASE 50
When a protest committee finds that in a port-starboard incident S did not change course and that there was not a genuine and reasonable apprehension of collision on the part of S, it should dismiss her protest. When the committee finds that S did change course and that there was reasonable doubt that P could have crossed ahead of S if S had not changed course, then P should be disqualified.
CASE 54
When a boat approaching an obstruction has hailed for room to tack, the protest committee should normally accept her judgment as to when safety required the hail. When the hailing boat observes no response to her hail, she should hail again more loudly. If after hailing she waits only a short time before tacking, she deprives the other boat of a choice of actions and risks contact with her. If a boat fails to keep a lookout she may fail to act reasonably to avoid contact.
CASE 75
When rule 18 applies, the rules of Sections A and B apply as well. When an inside overlapped right-of-way boat must gybe at a mark, she is entitled to sail her proper course until she gybes. A starboard-tack boat that changes course does not break rule 16.1 if she gives a port-tack boat adequate space to keep clear and the port-tack boat fails to take advantage of it promptly.
CASE 77
Contact with a mark by a boat’s equipment constitutes touching it. A boat obligated to keep clear does not break a rule when touched by a right-of-way boat’s equipment that moves unexpectedly out of normal position.
CASE 81
When a boat entitled to mark-room under rule 18.2(b) passes head to wind, rule 18.2(b) ceases to apply and she must comply with the applicable rule of Section A.
CASE 87
A right-of-way boat need not act to avoid contact until it is clear that the other boat is not keeping clear.
CASE 88
A boat may avoid contact and yet fail to keep clear.
CASE 91
A boat required to keep clear must keep clear of another boat’s equipment out of its normal position when the equipment has been out of its normal position long enough for the equipment to have been seen and avoided.
CASE 92
When a right-of-way boat changes course, the keep-clear boat is required to act only in response to what the right-of-way boat is doing at the time, not what the right-of-way boat might do subsequently.
CASE 99
The fact that a boat required to keep clear is out of control does not entitle her to exoneration for breaking a rule of Part 2. When a right-of-way boat becomes obliged by rule 14 to ‘avoid contact . . . if reasonably possible’ and the only way to do so is to crash-gybe, she does not break the rule if she does not crash-gybe. When a boat’s penalty under rule 44.1(b) is to retire, and she does so (whether because of choice or necessity), she cannot then be disqualified.
CASE 105
When two boats are running on opposite tacks, the starboard-tack boat may change course provided she gives the port-tack boat room to keep clear.
CASE 107
A boat that is not keeping a lookout may thereby fail to do everything reasonably possible to avoid contact. Hailing is one way that a boat may ‘act to avoid contact’. When a boat’s breach of a rule of Part 2 causes serious damage and she then retires, she has taken the applicable penalty and is not to be disqualified for that breach.

Rule 14(b), Avoiding Contact

CASE 19
An interpretation of the term ‘damage’.