That's good advice, Bob, but it is not really consistent with the rules for a faster boat to give way to a slower boat even when the faster boat has right-of-way.

And I think that the rules that have been developed over many decades do not seem to take into consideration the problems encountered between boats of greatly different speed levels.

I think the rules in general have been developed in terms of one-design racing, and they also work for handicap racing for boats of very similar speeds.

But when you have a Wave sailing straight downwind with big, fast, spinnaker boats criss-crossing the course, or when you have Wave sailing upwind with big, fast spinnaker boats crossing them, the Wave is like a deer in the headlights. It really cannot do much to get out of the way, any more than, as I said earlier in this thread, a tractor on a freeway. You just have to pray that the traffic sees you and flows around you. It is very intimidating to people like me, and I just drop out of the regatta.

Maybe the fast boats will experience this intimidation factor if they are on the course with hydrofoil boats that are going 35 knots while the non-hydrofoil boats are going only 18 knots.

As I said, these problems can be resolved by courses that are properly set up to accommodate boats of greatly different speeds.

But that still does not address the rules issues when boats of drastically different speeds meet on the race course.

Maybe we should be required to have whistle signals or something, but can people on other boats actually hear whistles from another boat when they are screaming downwind or charging through waves upwind? Rick can't even hear a whistle if I blow it in our own living room, because he can't hear high-pitch sounds.