Obstruction or not?

Had an interesting pursuit race last night where an incident took place just after rounding a mark.
The scenario is:
White approaches a mark of the course positioned just in the mouth of an inlet into the main estuary on a stand tight reach. Blue (a significantly quicker boat) overstood significantly and approached the mark on a beam reach, with no overlap.
At the mark white hardened up to a close hauled course at which point blue gained an overlap to leeward. Almost immediately blue hailed for water to tack. White continued as the far bank of the inlet was still at least 10 boat lengths away. Blue bore away slightly before luffing into the tack during which time white kept clear. As blue went beyond close hauled white was still continuing on stbd and no contact occurred. Blue then hailed protest.

So the rules are reasonably clear at a continuing obstruction, but I now that their is no zone for obstructions, but surely there has to be some limit to prevent people calling for water when not necessary.

Blue was clearly right of way boat and therefore entitled to luff white but didn't do so.

White did not tack should she have?

Originally posted by craiggo Had an interesting pursuit race last night where an incident took place just after rounding a mark. The scenario is: White approaches a mark of the course positioned just in the mouth of an inlet into the main estuary on a stand tight reach. Blue (a significantly quicker boat) overstood significantly and approached the mark on a beam reach, with no overlap. At the mark white hardened up to a close hauled course at which point blue gained an overlap to leeward. Almost immediately blue hailed for water to tack. White continued as the far bank of the inlet was still at least 10 boat lengths away. Blue bore away slightly before luffing into the tack during which time white kept clear. As blue went beyond close hauled white was still continuing on stbd and no contact occurred. Blue then hailed protest. So the rules are reasonably clear at a continuing obstruction, but I now that their is no zone for obstructions, but surely there has to be some limit to prevent people calling for water when not necessary. Blue was clearly right of way boat and therefore entitled to luff white but didn't do so. White did not tack should she have?

RYA 2016/1

Rule 20, Room to Tack at an Obstruction

When a boat hails for room to tack and she is neither approaching an obstruction nor sailing closehauled or above, she breaks rule 20.1. The hailed boat is required to respond even if the hail breaks rule 20.1. 

Edited by Brass - 30 Aug 16 at 11:06am

Thanks for that.

I believe white assumed that as there was navigable water to leeward, that blue could bear away to get enough separation to tack and then duck white, and therefore the request was made prematurely.

What white didn't anticipate was the requirement to tack or hail "you tack" so far from the obstruction then protest for making an early call.
The latter would surely be hard to prove in a protest and therefore highlights a potential issue with the rules whereby a leeward overlapping boat can hail to avoid an obstruction which is still a long way away in order to tactically gain from tacking away, with little fear that the other boat will win the protest on whether they were close to the obstruction or not.

Anyway, many thanks for the responses.

Hopefully it will clear things up a touch!