Is this illegal or unsporting?

Originally posted by Presuming Ed

I recently skippered in a series of 20 weekly races that incorporates 5 drops. With two races to go, we were 1.5 points from the lead and our lowest drops were 4 and 5. The lead boat was dropping two 7s. It occurred to me that, if we could force them to have a bad race, we could take the lead, but the other boat, a 41' cruiser was, in most conditions, slower than our 36' cruiser/racer and we had to beat them by several minutes to finish in front, so were rarely at the same place on the race course.
However, the second last race was held in 20-25 knots, conditions for which we don't really have a headsail, and which suited the bigger boat to a tee and, on the final beat to windward, our two boats were pretty much level, us in front but to leeward, them astern to windward. This was on port tack with two tacks required to take the windward mark (an island).

We tacked onto starboard and I thought they'd probably cross in front of us, but they too, tacked and, by the time they got up so speed we were a little astern and about a boat-length to windward. We had them pinned. We didn't tack at the layline but sailed maybe a minute past it, allowing another boat to cross astern of us both. The big boat eventually got impatient and started to pinch up, a manoeuvre we could easily have matched, but we tacked for the mark.

At the end of the race, the big boat got 3rd on corrected time (still in front of the boat we allowed to pass us both), about one minute and 20 secs. behind second. I doubt we affected their placing (and may even have improved their handicap a little).

After the race I thought that we'd wimped out: having decided to take them past the layline, we should have kept going. I imagine they'd eventually have bore away to make room to tack, but we could have bore away with them, preventing the tack and, eventually, they'd have had to bear away and gybe to head for the mark. If we'd tacked while they were gybing, we could probably have crossed in front of them, forcing them to sail above us and repeating the whole thing on the other tack.

We could have forced them to second-last place (we'd have been last) which on the day would have cost them 6 points, we'd have picked up 4 and would have been in the lead by half a point with one race remaining. Instead, we were 2 and a half points behind.

So (finally!) my questions:

1) Did we break a rule?

2) If not, if we'd done what I suggested we should have done – including bearing away to prevent them from tacking – would we have broken a rule?

3) If not, is what we did "unsporting'?

Thanks in advance,
Steve  = : ^ )

Edited by SteveB00 - 01 Apr 15 at 12:26am