We haven't had a decent rules discussion on here in while and I haven't had a chance to investigate this myself. I had a scenario racing monohulls this weekend and I'm not sure what rights we had....looking for (intelligent) input.

Light air race, 1st beat to weather, two boats are approaching A-mark. Prior to reaching the zone at the mark, Boat A (me), on port, was very close to crossing in front of boat B, on starboard, (a slightly faster - similar size boat). We were both clearly outside of the zone. Instead of risking the close cross, we cleanly tacked from port to starboard and leebowed Boat B intending to round A mark in this position. We were overlapped as we both entered the zone on starboard. However, a slight wind shift meant neither boat could lay the mark without a tack - again, both of us are on starboard and we were overlapped inside boat B and neither of us are able to fetch the mark on this tack.

As we approached the mark, we found ourselves hoping that boat B would tack away early leaving us room but this didn't happen and we eventually found ourselves with our bow under A-mark as boat B finally tacked away. We had to bear away, gybe, come back to close hauled, run for a short bit on port, and then tack back for A (naturally, after letting some traffic by that was coming in on starboard).

What should we have done in this scenario to minimize the damage? Did we have any options to request room from boat B to tack onto port to reach A-mark? I do believe that boat B did sail a proper course - they certainly didn't HAVE to tack earlier for any other reason.