Rick already explained earlier in this thread why he uses the Course 4 -- to get the bigger, faster boats off to the side of the course while the smaller, slower boats are starting. It's pretty intimidating (and potentially dangerous) for the smaller boats to be tacking to weather through a fleet of fast spinnaker boats tacking downwind (not to mention the messed-up air for everybody). A course 3 would not accomplish the purpose, and there would be no point in having a reach at all for the spinnaker boats.

Keep in mind that there are two courses -- the big outside course, and the shorter inside course for the slower boats. The goal, with multiple classes and two courses and boats of radically different speed, is to prevent as much interaction as possible between the boats on the inner course and the boats on the outer course.

The 4X on the big course actually gives the fast boats a total of three windward legs and two leeward legs, which should be plenty of time for tactics.

Believe it or not, positions can and do change on reaches. But even if all positions stayed the same, you would be no worse off when you get to the leeward mark than you were when you got to the weather mark. All you are doing is sailing a longer race than if you only got the windward-leeward legs.

My only suggestion for next year is that the reaching mark be set either high or low so that one of the reaching legs is a fast beam reach for the fun factor, and the other leg will be deep enough for everybody to carry a spinnaker with no problem. (Then the only debate should be about whether it is preferable to have the beam reach high on the course or low on the course.)

I would also like to point out that the race committee had the option of designating either a 4 or a 4X for either course and for any individual class on either course. This gives the RC a lot of flexibility to make sure that the boats all finish pretty close to the same time to eliminate waiting between races.

For example, one of the classes on the big course had some late finishers which delayed the next start sequence, so for the next two races, that class was given a Course 4 instead of a 4X.

Conversely, if one of the fleets on the short course was finishing very early, they could have been upped to a 4X.

The only way I can possibly see it done better is if we had double the race committee people, double the RC boats, double the chase boats, double the flags and had two separate courses for the fast boats and the "slow" boats. That would be nice, but it just ain't gonna happen.

I hope this explains it.