It seems that a lot of people have forgotten that sometimes the best avoidance is to cut the throttle, let traffic pass, then resume.
Some things to remember though - 1) Most sailboats appear as stationary objects to powerboats, and powerboat captains get used to that. I think sometimes we surprise them, and their intended course turns out to be wrong because we've covered more distance than they figured on. We need to be aware of that. 2) If you're in a channel, and the large boat has to stay in the channel to avoid running aground, their capability to avoid you may be severely limited - we can avoid these areas altogether sometimes, and it's worthwhile to do so when things are crowded. Again, the powerboat cutting throttle and letting traffic pass would help too, unless you're in an inlet with current or waveforms that require that speed and course be maintained. Again, if the other vessel is limited in its ability to safely navigate, you probably don't have the right of way. 3) If you're overtaking, you're burdened. 4) Boats fishing - lots of regular fishing and trawling guys think they have right of way because they are fishing - they're wrong, the definition of a vessel fishing does not include the usual fisher-folks you find. But they won't agree, and you're better off not going there.
There seems to be a lot of animosity between some powerboaters and sailors. Confront somebody at your own risk, logic and well-reasoned arguments may be useless, self-defense skills may be more useful.
At the Icebreaker two weekends ago, we almost got plowed under by a large cruiser, half planing, coming into an area near a mark we were using for our windward rounding. We had to alter course last second and duck his stern, plowing into a mountain of stern wake - had we not done so you all would have been reading about another outcome. The boat continued on and almost got one or two other boats. It was fairly open water, no restrictions to his ability to navigate, all he had to do was stop, let traffic clear... It shows that we need to always be on the look out.
