... the wider the gate, the more the competitors are likely to treat it as a single leeward mark by favoring one side. Nirvanna for the RO is getting an even split at the gate. It's a lot harder to do with monohulls than it is for catamarans.
Good points. Just like with the starting line, the right angle between gate marks is whatever gets the fleet to split evenly. Good PROs (or good mark boat officers) understand the fleet(s) involved and set the gate accordingly.
The monohull observation is accurate too. From my experience, high-performace dinghies will tend to go to whichever gate mark is closer to the wind. If one end of the gate is more than one boat-length favored, 90% of Melges 24s will go to that side. The other 10% go the other way just to get out of traffic, or to take a flier because they are behind.
Catamarans tend not to go for the favored mark so much, as for the favored side of the course. It's worth sailing a little farther to the mark to go the right way without having to tack.
Most keelboats I've seen, as well as less-experienced racers, tend to favor the port-rounding mark, so RC needs to favor the left gate mark a little.
The key in all cases, is to know just how much to bias the line against the wind to get the boats to use both marks. I've been fortunate to work with some excellent PROs as well as olympic-caliber mark-boat operators. The PROs get input from all the support boats, make their decision, and simply tell everyone a single course bearing and distance. Everybody knows from that where to set their marks. The leeward mark boat operators are capable of setting marks as closely as we can measure. I've kidded them for being one degree off. At the Sunfish Worlds, it was a thing of beauty to watch 45 boats use one gate mark, and 53 the other - even though current considerations sent them all to the right side of the course.
Regards,
Eric
