Some of the more common situations on our race track. Big thanks to Phil for these.
Mark Rounding Windward 1
Blue and Yellow are approaching the windward mark. The mark is to be passed to port. Blue calls for water at the mark. Yellow calls starboard.
So who has to give way to who?
And the answer is, BLUE. Water(Room) at the mark does not apply to boats on opposite tacks on a beat to windward. Blue is on port and has to give way to Yellow on starboard. At this moment it’s as if the mark is not there.
Mark Room – Windward 2
Blue tacks to starboard and pinches up to round the mark. Yellow heads up above close-hauled to avoid Blue. There is no contact between either boat or with the Mark.
So have any rules been broken?
Blue tacked from port onto starboard inside the 3 boat length zone around the mark and is fetching it. Blue must not cause a boat that has been on starboard tack since entering the zone to sail above close-hauled to avoid contact. Yellow has been on starboard tack since entering the 3 boat length zone around the mark and has to head up above close-hauled to avoid Blue. Thus blue is penalised and has to do some turns.
Interestingly if yellow had been a boat length to windward of the lay line, blue would have been fine as Yellow would not have had to head up above close hauled to avoid blue.
Mark Room – Leeward 1
Blue, Yellow and Green are arriving at the leeward mark. Yellow and Blue make contact but there is no damage.
Who should take a penalty and why?
So without further ado lets look at all 3 boats. Yellow enters the 3 boat length zone first. Green is overlapped with Yellow and Blue is overlapped on green. Thus under the rules blue counts as overlapped on yellow. Yellow is required to give mark room to Blue and failed to do so. Green would also be in trouble, green has also failed to give blue room, which can be seen by Greens boom being over the top of blue. Luckily blues boom magically passes through green on the gybe or it would have been a big mess!
So we have yellow and green needing to take a 2 turn penalty. All covered by rule18.2.
Mark Room – Leeward 2
I went looking for something a bit more like Rollesby, but I couldn’t find an image with 15 boats arriving at once. So this will have to do:
3a: Is Yellow entitled to mark-room from Light Blue?
3b: Is Magenta entitled to mark-room from Green?
Wait for it…………………