This is a all a case of what to do when good races go bad. It almost never happens, but does, and it's best to be prepared.

That being said, there is no 100% fix that will always work. Murphy just won't have it. The language in Mark's example is as good as you can get (without additional wordsmithing that wouldn't change much), but cannot deal with every scenario.

What do I mean? How many times have you seen a gate mark get caught by a boat and start going away? Suppose that's the right gate (looking upwind). Now boats will be rounding the left mark to starboard as long as they can see the "old" right mark. Suppose the gate boat is helping a capsized boat when this is all going down? When does the SI "fix" requiring boats to round the remaining mark to port take effect, and what kind of mayhem might ensue?

Advice from the pro PROs (i.e. AC and Olympics): Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, then apologize and reconstruct later. The trick (and this is WAY easier than it sounds) is knowing when to do nothing to make the big picture better. Being open and honest with the OA, sailors and jury is often the best trait a PRO can have.

Mike