While this won't fix all the problems, one major help here is to have a separate (longer) weather mark (and offset) for the spinnaker boats. Won't help much in a 50-boat spinnaker fleet, but will help a ton in mixed fleets.
I don't quite follow that logic, at least for catamarans. Spinnaker cats generally sail much deeper than sloop and uni-rigs. If different types of catamarans rounded the same mark, the spinnaker boats would tend to sail below the non-spins. After that, things are not really different than anywhere on the downwind leg. What am I missing?
Well, the primary reason for the longer mark is to fix timing issues (target times for the various speed boats in a mixed-class event), so that the slower boats don't have to do a one-lap race (exaggerating, but you get the idea). But, it has the added advantage of reducing the number of boats rounding the weather mark with spinnaker boats. As you and I pointed out, this can't fix all the problems, but in my experience, it helps a lot.
Mike
