a not such simple port/starboard

I am outside boat in a staggard line of  3 or 4 port tack boats, appraoching a mark but aiming to tack onto starboard on the layline and beat in on stbd approximately 5 or 6 lengths from the mark. It's a small lake, it's gusty and shifty.

There is a boat on starboard about 4 lengths further out but for a long while it looks like they are dead in the water as we have wind, they don't and it looks comfortably like we're passing at least a length in front. Then the wind kicks in!

They take a lift, accellerate, and call starboard. I call for water to tack - no response. I call again - no response. Slightly more colourful call for water to tack - no response and it's now too late to do anything and the starboard boat taks off amid a rather blue cloud of air.

Surely any penalty for this infringement muat pass down the line of boats and either they should have protested the boat inside me, or protested me and then i protest the one inside me and so on.

In any protest it is surely wrong that i should be penalised when i was prevented from keeping clear by another boat?

i called water to tack (3 times) to the boat inside me. He claimed afterwards that he was telling me that io could go but 1) i didn't hear any hail from him and 2) at no point could i tack without putting a hole in his bow about two feet behind his stem. He didn't IMO have room to go behind me.

This was an open meeting, not a club race.

You are right but the lie of the land, length and bias of first beat and the wind inside the bay in which the mark was located meant that you had little choice. You either drifted along the bank on starboard hoping for a gust or stuck out in the breeze and came in as close as you dare on port. Because this was the first beat things were congested and out of choice i wouldn't have been there, i actually think you were better off coming in closer on port and pray for a gap - at least being on the inside you control where you go and either tack and go round or duck behind until there is one.

The whole situation is not one that happens all that often, and only when either the course is poorly laid or a club is suffering a poor wind direction. You can't criticise the race management, but NW is the club in questions worst possible wind direction! A starboard rounding would have been better, but there is nowhere to go to afterwards.

Maybe the boat next to you knew the latest rules, and so was ignoring a call for "water to tack".

The rules don't mention "water" anywhere: you need to call for room.