Pete,
I programmed the rules engine. There are many many holes, but, I'm pretty proud of how rights are calculated when one of the boats is tacking. It's literally 'from the book':
- When the boat starts the tack ALL rights are preserved while in the initial tack.
- When the boat reaches the wind direction it loses all rights.
- When the boats reaches the new closehauled angle it gets again the privileges of the new tack. A problem there... the normal tack includes falling off a bit to get speed and go smoothly again to the closehauled angle, from the rules perspective the boat has all rights associated to the tack since it passed first time the closehauled angle.
- If the user decides to stop the normal tack procedure, (rudders centered before he reached the closehauled angle, tacticat ENTER key) he recovers the rights immediatly. I aggree this is not normal, but, what if i decide to finish tack and start in the new angle on a course that is very slow ?(and i know this is understatement). How can you protest?

aestela.