Staying Alive; How much should the RC do?

A post over at Tillerman's blog highlighted a man overboard incident at the recent Star North Americans.

The incident in a nutshell;

• Elderly Star skipper, way at the back of the fleet, falls out of the Star in a broach.
• His crew cannot sail the Star back to him and the skipper in the water has an inoperable inflatable life jacket.
• The skipper in the water is close to going under when the skipper of a nearby dismasted Star swims over towing a spare life jacket and keeps the man afloat until the Canadian Olympic support RIB shows up.

Tillerman's post has the link to the original post and the subsequent discussion. Most of the discussion centers around the

• skippers culpability; he's too old to be out there, he's wearing a life preserver that was clearly inadequate.
• the response when the crew's VHF distress call was picked up at the club (but not picked up by the RC).

Well folks, when you are organizing the race committee, let's just shitcan the personal responsibility argument. Yes, in a perfect world, all or us are wearing life preservers that work and our boats are immaculately prepared to handle 25 knots of wind and we are all in superb sailing shape but the reality is that all of us at one time or the other have got into trouble on the water; sometimes it is a fine line between getting out of it on our own or needing assistance .... many times sailors out on the race course are inexperienced, over confident, over their heads. Bottom line, if as RC you had to rely on an outside boater to perform a rescue, then you have had a failure as an RC, a bigger failure than not setting the starting line properly or flying the wrong flags.

My questions to Cedar Point YC;

You had two Stars in distress in the same area; one flailing around with one sailor and another dismasted and, as the story's been told, a Cedar Point YC crash boat never made it to the site. A fellow competitor and a coach boat had to perform the rescure.

• Did Cedar Point YC have crash boats for the Star North Americans?
• If they did, were they tied up with other rescues? Meaning was there inadequate rescue resources for the number of boats racing?
• Were there any Cedar Point RC personnel watching the race course and keeping track of the distressed Stars?
• Why did the Cedar Point RC need to be alerted by VHF radio from the home club about the incident?

These are the most important questions the RC need to address.

Unfortunately, in the U.S. crash boats are usually an afterthought in RC planning and are usually manned by the most inexperienced volunteers.