Race officer's nightmare? Some people's nightmare is other's dream...

That course setup is fairly commonly used here in the US (it's my personal preferred configuration for spin vs. non-spin boats), and results in the "slower" boats getting equal courses to the "faster" boats. The alternative that was used for too many years resulted in the largest class of boats (H16s) starting last and sailing shorter courses. Not good for morale of the biggest class of the event.

But I digress... While the result of this particular race isn't ideal, it is somewhat helpful that the video was running. It would have been more helpful if it stayed focused on the finish mark, as once it turned away, you could identify the boats that had just finished, but now have no record of the order of finish the boats continuing to finish. Distinctions of the boats other than sail numbers could be used to help identify them later, but if you don't have any record of which boat finished when (whether by sail number or otherwise), the video becomes useless for those boats in the later packs.

The best tool to use in this case was unfortunately not present: a mark boat with a race officer calling the line from the pin end. Best practice is to use the boat (anchored) with an orange flag as the mark, with the RO sighting from the flag.

If all else fails, the race doesn't HAVE to be abandoned as a result of this fiasco. As happens when the results blow overboard, sometimes, results need to be re-created after the fact.

The most useful practice that I have heard about (in US SAILING training) is to get all the skippers together onshore and have them physically line up in the order they finished. Believe me, they all know who they finished with, and will sort out any arguments themselves. If two or three can't decide who crossed the line first, call them tied.

The whole group may whine a bit, but it is a far better option for them than abandoning the race. And, if any of them have ever volunteered for this job, they'll appreciate the effort to get it right and keep the race.

Mike