Leeward mark rounding

Early season sailing, so my rules head is blunt.  I've also lost my handy book, which is really annoying! !

There are lots of "it depends" about this..
If the boats are sailing anything approaching hot angles the smart money is that starboard has been overlapped for a long time before reaching the zone so is owed water as well as being on starboard so port boats have to keep clear and if they need to gybe then that's tough...

But if starboard must gybe at the mark then they must do it promptly (18.4)

And if starboard was clear behind the port boats then 18.2.b overides 10 and starboard needs to let the port boats go if they are in the zone. If they are just outside the zone however its just port/starboard.

The trouble is that as soon as opposite gybes are involved a boat can be a hell of a lot further from the mark than you are and still have an overlap...

Here's an extreme example: lets say the boats gybe through 90 degrees. The leader goes round the windward mark and bangs the R corner. All the other boats gybe off and bang the L corner. When the leader gybes the entire fleet, including boats that are hundreds of yards behind him, have an overlap. When he gets to the leeward mark all those boats will *still* be overlapped, so he needs to give room to any of them that are close enough to require it.

Edited by JimC - 18 Apr 11 at 2:56pm

Originally posted by ASok Thanks for the drawing, thats helped me get the picture straight in my mind. Its too fine a line to call on whether I was clear of an overlap.  I guess the take home message for me it to not get caught in this situation again.  Useful lesson though - too often its all nice clean mark rounding.  I quite appreciate a nice problem to get your head around.  Just glad it was on a light wind day when everything goes that little bit slower

Were you both converging at 90 or so degrees?  If so it's almost vertain that there was an overlap a long way out!