The picture distorts the distance. I was the boat with the smoke colored sails coming in with a pretty good view of what was happening. All the port boats had understood the mark and were coming in dead down wind. The 16 was coming in hot on starboard. We slowed down seeing that this was going to be ugly and figured they would all be past the mark by the time we got there. It looked like the H16 was within the 3 boat length circle when he jibed. With the wall of boat coming at him it appeared that he jibed early to avoid mayhem. Being that everyone was going dead down wind the only safe out for the F16 was to go inside the mark douse the come back to round. I don't think he could have gone deeper without jibing. With the surf and everyone doing dead down wind none of the boats had any real maneuvering room.
Think about how ugly it would have gotten if the H16 had decided to not jibe early and pressed starboard tack another 20 feet(where he should have jibbed for a proper rounding). All the port tack boats would have had to jib to avoid.