Originally Posted by mbounds
After much reflection and review, I've made the determination that I shouldn't comment on fleet racing situations late on a Friday night when I've been studying for team race umpiring the next day. I was completely wrong in this situation. Mea maxima culpa.

Green is the inside boat. Yellow owes her mark room and must gybe when she (Yellow) enters the zone in order to provide Green with sufficient mark room, which includes room to gybe.

Something that's not obvious in this case is that the zone around the RC boat isn't circular, but boat-shaped and consequently much larger than my original diagram. Here's the diagram with the zone shown around the boat (light blue shading).
[Linked Image]



You've got them both gybing a little before they enter the zone and I don't think that's quite right. Yellow would not be obligated to gybe or otherwise avoid green until they were in the zone with overlap. If they can stay out of the zone, yellow can control the gybe back to the mark (as long as she remains on her proper course as the overtaking boat) on the layline and if she can break overlap before/as they enter the zone, yellow does not owe green room. While I'm certainly fallible, pretty confident I have that one right but correct me if wrong.

Supposing they are overlapped entering the zone, both on starboard, you are saying that yellow needs to anticipate green's gybe to port because green is currently the inside boat and yellow should gybe away before reaching the layline to allow green to be inside and have room at the mark - am I interpreting your statement correctly? BTW, I agree with this is how the rules SHOULD be structured in this situation (re; my earlier comment about yellow driving green into oncoming traffic at a gate)

However, I do believe that the word "inside" is very poorly used in this context in this rule with these gybing angles. Green isn't technically "inside" (between yellow and the mark) at the time that Yellow is required to make a maneuver because green is "inside".


Jake Kohl