I'm not responding to anybody in particular -- just about the marks in general. To me it is funny that we have all gotten so spoiled about having BIG marks.

When my family was racing back in the 1940's and 1950's and 1960's, the marks were just little, skinny poles with a little tiny flag at the top. You had to be REALLY farsighted to see a mark. And that was on Lake Erie, that sometimes had big waves. And we didn't go by compass headings, either. Just spotting the mark was one of the difficult parts of the game.

I'm not saying we should do that again -- just that we are lucky to have such relatively big marks now. Most of today's sailors don't know what it was like back then.