Thanks Matt, just confirming that I understand the rules correctly. I agree, the instances you list above happen every day, and rarely get pushed.

Don has some excellent reasons they maybe should be pushed. After someone is hurt it's too late to try to enforce the rules.

On a philisophical note, there could be a Catch-22 if you want to require an SI that modifies a class rule without realizing it (like Matt said, it would be tough to know all the rules for all the beach cats that could come out of the woodwork for an open event). If you stated that a specific type of lifejacket was required, but that conflicted with class rules (and you didn't follow Reg 26), what would that do? Fortunately, there aren't that many ISAF-recognized cat classes, so I guess an OA could spend some time reading all of those rules, but yikes...

I have seen some SIs for open mono events that are liberal with their class rule "over-rides," such as allowing (or prohibiting) VHF, etc. They don't list all the specific class rules they are changing, they just say something to the effect of "this takes precedence over individual class rules." Not sure how that technically would hold up.

Yes, it's winter... <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Mike