At Blue = position 5 in both Fig 1 and Fig 2.

Specifically, when Blue is no longer overlapped with the mark.

when Blue is no longer overlapped with the mark.
Hence: after 6 in Fig 1, and at 5 1/2 in Fig 2.

Figure 1: entitlement to mark-room for Blue began at the zone, when both were overlapped, with Yellow slightly ahead, and Blue was inside. Blue was not given mark-room by Yellow and was compelled to touch the mark at 5 and will be exonerated. Hence, Blue was not given mark-room by Yellow.

Figure 2. Blue had entitlement for mark-room at the zone as both were on port tack and overlapped and Blue was inside. Blue was below the layline but bore off to sail her proper course to the mark. Yellow gybed between 2 and 3 but Blue still was entitled to mark-room from the moment the zone was reached until the mark was rounded and she was on her course for the next mark. Blue was given all the mark-room to which she was entitled by Yellow (despite her gybe, apparently to break the overlap).

The 'gift' of mark-room begins at the moment the zone is entered and not at the mark.

Ron K

I think you are pretty much on .. only a couple comments.

First, it's unclear if Paul intended to show a boom/mark touch as usually one would label that. The boom could have just as easily swung over the mark. That said your point is taken given that fact.

Second, in your comment regarding the yellow gybe "apparently to break the overlap" ..just to be clear .. since Rule 18 is in effect the tacks the boats are on has no bearing on whether or not overlap exists. It only comes down to the lack of being either clear ahead or clear behind each other. I'm not saying you meant to indicate otherwise, but it was unclear.

Lastly, your analysis talks a lot about when mark-room begins, but not when it ends, which others covered in their comments.

I think Paul phrased the question interestingly (as he is apt to do) .. so he might be poking us for something more .. how about this ..

Answer to Paul's Question:

There is an entire universe of mark-room that can be given and thus one can't determine when mark-room is given actually. What we can determine is when it has not been given.

Therefore, it is simply the absence of the lack of room .. the lack of something missing which in the end proves mark-room's presence and thus a boat is always given another boat mark-room except when they are not.

:-D

PS .. please forgive me .. I've been listening to "Philosophise This", a philosophy podcast on Spotify (very cool and highly recommended btw).

I have to apologize for the gybing boat in the diagrams. It was not intentional. For some reason TSS adds that in when you push a model beyond DDW. Perhaps Yoann can tell us how to avoid it. And the booms on the models are long so we get unintentional (apparent) contact.

I think the important point here is that this question is surprisingly subjective. Even in a simple rounding opinions seem to differ. However, if we follow the definition of mark-room, we become aware of what facts are important and can come to an agreement as to where it no longer applies. This is my version of how the rule applies.

When a boat that was entitled to mark-room under rule 18.2(b) is no longer entitled to room to sail to the mark, and she is able to safely leave the mark on the required side by sailing on a heading necessary to sail the course, she has been given mark-room (18.2(d)) and rules 18.2(b) and 19.2(c) cease to apply.

There is a lot packed into that interpretation, and it appears to be interpreted differently for Fleet and Team racing (not surprisingly), but it will lead a jury to ask the right questions and come to a conclusion pretty quickly. In the above diagrams, the course to the next mark is missing and is of critical importance. We cannot say with certainty where mark-room shuts off without that information.

What surprises me greatly is the assumptions that I and others have made based on the diagrams.
1. Where is there evidence that blue's boom hit the mark. It could easily have passed above it on many courses I have sailed in dinghies and even more so in yachts.There is no evidence or statement of actual contact with a mark.
2. In both cases I made assumptions about where the next mark lay by looking at the course the boats took. Why would Blue in Fig 2 have gone to a close hauled course and held it if the next mark did not require a work? Why in Fig 1 would the mark not be almost directly downwind, given the course the boats had adopted a few boat lengths from the mark. (Yes I know that after rounding marks a lot of tactical courses are taken as people search for and block opportunities to get to windward or try to get out of dirty air, but why in the absence of a direction to the next mark would anyone expect that to be a real issue in the question?
3. While there are no wind direction arrows I assumed the wind was coming directly from the top to the bottom of each diagram.
Having said that the discussion and responses have taught me about a more critical analysis of mark room. Thanks Paul.

In practical terms, the proper course after rounding is immaterial with regard to the termination of mark room.
The determinant is overlap with the mark.
The split-second difference between mark overlap ending now or 45 degrees later than now cannot be proven in a PC hearing.
Nor can it merit a finding of initially giving the erstwhile mark room boat room to keep clear.

Did Yellow break RRS ?
Is Blue exonerated under RRS ?
Would we come to the same decision if the course to the next mark was straight down?


BTW, this is not at all an uncommon scenario on SF bay, especially during the winter.

Paul, before answering your Q, can you point us to any Cases/Appeals that support the interpretation that RRS 18.2 doesn't turn-off immediately as soon as the inside boat's stern perpendicular clears the mark?

Paul - In my view the answer to your questions are yes, yes and no.

Much has been made of the point as whether or not blue's stern has cleared the mark but in my view this is irrelevant. The applicable parts of the definition of Mark Room mean that in this case blue is entitled to room to sail to the mark, leave it closely on the required side and round it as necessary to sail the course. When blue gybes in position 5 she is still in the act of rounding the mark to sail the course and is therefore entitled to room to do this according to the definition. Her stern may well have cleared the mark but in a slow turning heavy boat it is quite possible that the manoeuvre of "rounding" may continue to take place some time after the mark has been passed. If it was otherwise why would the definition clearly state that room was required for both of these acts ? In position 5 blue was entitled to mark room to gybe which she was not given hence my first two "yeses."

The reason for my "no" is that if the next mark was situated "straight down" then a gybe was not required as part of the rounding manoeuvre as blue only had to bear away. When she gybes blue would not be rounding the mark as necessary to sail the course (she would be gybing for some other possibly tactical purpose) and therefore would not be taking mark room to which she was entitled and should be penalised under rule 10.

Bill H .. but not to take too much from your point of not solely focusing on the stern-perp ... that clearing the stern perpendicular is still necessary, but not sufficient to turn-off 18, correct? - Ang

I would recommend you not consider it a hard and fast rule that the perpendicular must be clear. There are scenarios where mark-room has been given and the inside boat is still "overlapped" with the mark. I think the real question is whether the course of the inside boat is still influenced by the mark, much like the question of whether a boat has cleared the finish line.

Paul, may I respectfully suggest that it might be useful to give boat types and conditions for some of these scenarios? Not that that would change the rules, of course, but it might affect how much room is necessary for a seamanlike maneuver. That said, in Fig. 1, I think Blue had been given room between pos. 5 & 6, though she was still a ROW boat throughout (if she didn't gybe), and had luffing rights if it wasn't a Rule 17 overlap (I'm assuming all of these are fleet races). In Fig 2, I think Blue had been given room by just before pos. 5, though in some boats and flatter sea states, she may have taken marginally more than she was entitled to. In your third scenario, I submit that in smaller boats and flatter water, Blue could have gybed sooner and so broke 18.4 and is not entitled to exoneration because she was outside the room to which she was entitled. The answer would be different if the mark were DDW, as it would not be clear that a gybe was necessary to sail the course, and 18.4 would not apply. If (a) boat types/conditions decreed that Blue needed a boat length's distance between her and the mark to make a seamanlike rounding and gybe and so complied with 18.4, or (b) 18.4 didn't apply, and Yellow remained so close that Blue couldn't gybe away without hitting her, Yellow would have been guilty of either (a) breaking 18.2 or (b) breaking Rule 11 after the mark rounding was complete.

I have found that it is useful to look at the continuation of the turn. If the gibe is in a continuation of the turn to bare off and round the mark then its quite easy to accept the argument that the jibe is happening while sailing within the markroom to which the inside boat is entitled.
If the testimony is that the boat pauses the turn to say, hoist and fill a kite and get the crew in position to jibe then it is clearly not a continuation of the rounding and I would say that the windward is keeping clear and doesn't need to anticipate that leeward will jibe. The jibing boat breaks rule 10 by becoming a port boat and not keeping clear of starboard from the time her boom crosses centerline to the time of the point of contact.

I would say that its really hard to tell just from the drawing or from a skipper moving a model boat on the table to know if the jibe is part of the rounding and you probably have to ask questions (hopefully not leading questions) to figure it out. A good protestee will ask these questions and try to give evidence that the protestor delayed the jibe.

Feel free to shout me down if I have this wrong.

Ang - answering your specific question I think you have to look at the definition. That definition states that mark room is room to leave the mark on the required side and round the mark as necessary to sail the course. The stern clearing the mark would indicate that the mark has been left on the required side but the manoeuvre of rounding the mark may continue to take place for some time afterwards, arguably until the boat has assumed a course towards the next mark.

My initial comment should be taken with a grain of salt, now that I see that a more philosophical bent is needed about the meaning of ‘end’ as in: ‘…when does mark-room end.’ At first glance, mark-room ends when the room needed to round the mark has been taken. But, what does it mean to ‘round’ a mark? As commented by others, this is somewhat subjective because there are no alarm bells that go off once a boat has ‘rounded’ the mark. Perhaps, some day, there will be a drone hovering over the mark to be rounded, which will be able to compute, in real time, when a boat has rounded in such a way that the right to mark-room has ended. (Of course, the computer receiving the drone feed will be able to draw a Stan Honey type of circle marking the zone, calibrated to the hull length of the boat that has just reached the 3-hull length perimeter. This feed will occur in real time and a viewer on the RC boat will then become a sort of umpire, ruling “safe” or “out.”) Is the mark rounded when the aftermost part of the stern is no longer abeam of the mark? Which part of the mark? As we round a mark, we are continually altering course as we bear away at the windward mark (or perform a gybe-set), or head up at a leeward mark. But, there is an instant during the rounding when the course is further altered to finally get on to the heading of the proper course to the next mark, as it says in the definition of mark-room; “…as necessary to sail the course.” It is only at the instant of this final course alteration on to a heading “…. as necessary to sail the course” that the mark has been rounded and ‘left’ on the required side that the right to mark-room ends. At the windward mark, as the boat bears away to get on to this ‘proper course’ heading, which might finally be anywhere between 15 to 30 degrees, or more, to the right, or to the left of dead downwind, mark-room has ended. The “proper course” which is “necessary to sail the course” is usually the true wind angle that optimizes VMG for that particular boat. In Figure 1, mark-room for Blue ends between 6 and 7 when she gybed (but then gybed back on to starboard, apparently to gain ROW under rule 11?). In Figure 2, it is only at 6 that Blue is on the heading “necessary to sail the course.” In both instances, mark-room did not end as the stern passed the mark but only after Blue had already left the mark behind.

Hi everyone.

This is a very interesting conversation. Im now in Palma, before Princesa Sofia Trophy and have been discussing a situation in which we need some clearance.

Its about Rule 18 in an upwind Mark to be left on port, but with a situation in which the off set mark is very high up (the boats finally need to tack to make it to this mark). In this case, is the upwind mark a "Mark" in which one may be entitled for room? And when did we actually passed the mark, if the offset is higher -more upwind- than the upwind mark?

The situation was between 3 boats, boat A was approaching the mark on starboard, boat B and C where coming on port -major shift, very much over the layline- and both tack inside the zone. Boat B tacks clear ahead of A and boat B finish the tack overlapped on windward of A. A cannot go anywhere and crashed the stern of boat B not being able to head up because of boat C. On a normal situation my understanding is that both B and C broke rule 18.

Now, what happens next is that the offset mark is very high because of the same shift. In this case, is it correct to consider that the boats already passed the mark, and exonerate boat B?

Its an interesting situation that may occur quite often with big shifts and off set buoys.

Thank you!

I moved Martin's question to a new post. Please leave comments there.