If you think you may have broken a Part 2 rule, take a Two-Turns Penalty; for touching a mark, a One-Turn Penalty. Taking the penalty settles the matter for that breach unless you caused injury or serious damage, or gained a significant advantage in the race or series despite the penalty. In those cases the only penalty is to retire.
44.1 Taking a Penalty
If you broke a Part 2 rule and rule 31 in the same incident, the Part 2 penalty covers both. The notice of race or sailing instructions may replace the turns with a Scoring Penalty or something else.
44.2 One-Turn and Two-Turns Penalties
Get well clear of other boats as soon as possible after the incident, then promptly make the turns in the same direction, each including one tack and one gybe. A penalty taken at the finish must be completed with the hull fully on the course side before you finish.
44.3 Scoring Penalty
Only when the notice of race or sailing instructions specify it. Fly a yellow flag at the first reasonable opportunity, keep it up until you finish, point it out to the race committee at the finish and tell them which boat was involved. The penalty is the number of points the documents set, or by default 20% of the DNF score added to your score, rounded to the nearest tenth with 0.05 rounded up. It never makes your score worse than DNF, and other boats' scores do not change, so two boats can share a score. Scored SCP.
Common situations
Working out a 20% scoring penalty
Twenty boats entered, so DNF is 21 points. 20% of 21 is 4.2. A boat that finishes 6th with a scoring penalty scores 6 + 4.2 = 10.2 points; the boats 7th to 20th keep 7 to 20. See Appendix A for the worked table.
Changed in 2025
The Scoring Penalty is now based on points, not places, and rounded to the nearest tenth of a point (0.05 up) rather than to a whole place.