Confusng Situations

A couple of situations have arisen recently:

1. Standard situation - a starboard tack boat is approachiong to windward mark (to be left to starboard) and a port tacker is converging. Starboard tacker maintains his courrse until port tacker has to tack off (port  wasnt high enough to duck starboard and still clear the mark). Port tacker says that illegal - suggests that he only needs to give room for a rounding ?. Surely at the windward mark the right of way boat can sail on as far as he wishes ?

 

2. Two starboard tackers approach the windward mark on the layline (to be left to starboard). They are not overlapped but the boat in front cant tack fast enough to prevent boat behind clipping him if he wishes. Boat behind scream "dont tack" etc How does the boat ahead round the mark in the lead ?. This would be worse if, say, 8 boats all followed each other towards the mark.

 

Any help would be great.

 

My take......

1. I agree starboard may continue and force port to tack off, this should widen the gap between the boats and give starboard clearer air on the following reach/run.

2. Starboard leading boat should slow within the 3 boats length circle and force the following boat to overlap, if the following boat goes for the inside she has no right to room, and if she goes outside there is room for the leading boat to tack without fowling.

These situations happen all the time with starboard roundings of a windward mark and cause all sorts of problems...

 

Gordon

A nice clear explanation of Situation 2. Quite scary how few people (in my experience)actually seem to understand it or choose to ignore it in practice and tack round a mark without any regards to the boat behind.

Originally posted by ex laser Originally posted by The Moo Gordon A nice clear explanation of Situation 2. Quite scary how few people (in my experience)actually seem to understand it or choose to ignore it in practice and tack round a mark without any regards to the boat behind. i could not agree more martin, shame you did not remember it at mark no 1 the week i sailed elaines moth!!!!!!!!!!

Duncan. I'm struggling to remember the finer detail but I do have a recollection of tangling with you during a rounding of Mark no 1 a while back. However, unlike Situation 2 described by the OP, I thought the approach to it on that day was sailing offwind from No 4 or similar and heading up close hauled as we rounded. If it is the same incident I don't recollect actually tacking to round the mark before leaving it astern and getting in your way.

Shame that we did not discuss this on the day really....

Well enjoy your laugh at my expense mate, but my recollection of the situation is that I went into the zone clear ahead, you tried to get into gap between me and the mark and the door was shut on you and we tangled whilst rounding the mark. I recall my rounding of the mark involved heading up on a closehauled course and any tack came after I had left the mark astern and not as part of the rounding (which this thread discussion was originally about)

If I was aggrieved at being called starboard on it was because I felt that there were unresolved issues from our tangling during the mark rounding.

Like I said it would have been good to have discussed it further at the time but if I recall correctly you retired from the race after that incident which made it impossible.