PART 2


Rule 18.2(b) when boats are overlapped when the first of them reaches the zone While rule 18.2(a) may be transient, rule 18.2(b), when it applies, will create a mark-room obligation from the moment that a boat enters the zone, and both elements of mark-room will apply. The obligation to continue to give mark-room will not be affected by breaking or re-establishing the overlap, as stated in rule 18.2(c), provided that no boat entitled to mark-room passes head to wind (or leaves the zone).


Rule 18.2(f) will excuse a failure to give mark-room only in the limited circumstances in that rule – a late inside overlap from clear astern, or by tacking to windward of the other boat. This has two major implications.


Room to Sail to the Mark


Firstly, all these boats are overlapped on each other, either directly or by virtue of the Blue boats being overlapped between Red and Yellow that would otherwise be clear ahead and clear astern, because of the definition Overlap. Each inside boat is required to keep clear of the boat outside her under rule 11. If the overlaps have existed for some time, Red will have to give mark-room, on entering the zone, to all the boats inside her, Yellow included, with no excuse for not doing so1


. She must therefore take action before entering the zone to enable herself to do so, as must the Blue boats. To leave it until zone entry would be leaving it too late. Yellow is entitled to room to sail to the mark – in other words, directly to the mark – and the boats outside her will break rule 18.2(b) if they do not give her that room, even if they are belatedly able to give her mark-room when she is actually at the mark.


The Blue boats are also entitled to room to sail ‘to the mark’. In their case, it is physically impossible for that room to be room to be next to the mark because of the boats inside each of them, and so room to sail to the mark must be room to sail as close to the mark as is consistent with also enabling room to be given to any further room-entitled inside boats.


However, if Yellow has only just become overlapped to windward of the other boats, and if, starting from that moment, they physically cannot give her mark-room, rule 18.2(f) says that they do not have to try to do the impossible.


Secondly, an outside boat that tries to shake off an inside overlap before mark entry must consider the consequences of failure. Blue may find that she has used her right of way to put herself in a position where it is not possible to give immediate room to inside- overlapped keep-clear Yellow to sail ‘to the mark’ at zone entry, even if she can later give room ‘to round the mark’. Neither rule 18.2(f) nor any rule exempts her from giving that room.


1 WS 114, Q&A 1 72 RYA The Racing Rules Explained Has Blue Gone Too Far?


Protest!


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