Wow, a little too much emotion here guys. It's really hard to follow the story and find facts with everyone screaming and calling one another names.

I have to agree with Eric and Jeff D. that there are conflicting stories and without a protest, it would be difficult to get to the bottom of this.

Having said that, I totally agree with Jeff D. above. Go to the linked website and save that first picture. Open it in Paint (or equivalent) and do a Flip Horizontal. That will give you a rough idea of what it sounds like the boats looked like coming into the left gate (it's basically a mirror image of what is shown in that link of the right gate mark rounding).

The picture of the actual incident in this thread seems to confirm that the boats were probably in roughly that arrangement when the first one got to the zone. If STBD were further behind, that just solidifies the fact that all of the other boats were overlapped inside of her. (Note, even if the port boats were not overlapped with one another, they are all overlapped inside of STBD). If STBD were further ahead when she entered the zone, she would have been gone before the others got there.

JeffS: You have a lot going on in your posts, but just to clarify, this is already in the current book:
Zone (definition) The area around a mark within a distance of three hull lengths of the boat nearer to it. A boat is in the zone when any part of her hull is in the zone.

As an aside, I sit on protest committees for all levels of events, kids through adults, cats and monohulls. One common theme is that the higher the event level, the higher the expectation of the sailors abilities to handle their boats correctly (and less room needs to be given for the same situation). The key terms are promptly and seamanlike. If a boat (at any level) waits to respond, she's out; but a new sailor may legitimately need more time to complete a maneuver. The gray area is seamanlike.

Hope this helps.

Mike