John, I didn't see one, so I was wondering if I might have missed a remote case.
Thanks to all.

Gijs - or, looking at the speed blue is going to cover that much more ground between 2 and 3: at 3, dump the jib to slow and luff behind blue, then dump an armful of mainsheet and whip in the jib to dive back down past their stern. A quick s-turn there to get blue clear to leeward of you while they still have their spinnaker up and having to drop and gybe a boat length from the mark, they are not going to be able to shut the door. You’ll pop through tight to the mark and a boat length to windward. 

Granted, but, you know: you can take the sailor out of the Lasers, but...

Yellow and Blue are overlapped all the way to China ..... when yellow is entering the zone...

Carlo re: "Yellow at position 1 entered in the area. She should have the right of room at mark. "

The above quoted statement is not correct based upon the new 18.2(a)(2).  18.2(a)(2) ONLY provides mark-room to the first boat to the zone when the boats are not overlapped .. (emphasis added below)

Blue is clearly overlapped inside of Yellow at #1 .. so it is 18.2(a)(1) which applies, not 18.2(a)(2).  18.2(a)(1) gives the inside boat (Blue) mark-room from the outside boat (Yellow).

PS:  BTW .. I need to debrief Blue and get her to share her in-the-zone acceleration technique.  Very impressive! :-)

I agree with Angelo here.

I did once have this happen when sailing a J/80 and rounding inside of a slower PHRF boat. They claimed they never saw us coming (to be fair we were planing in at about 5 times their speed), and they forced me into a broach to go behind them. It was the last time I sailed in that fleet.

Just adding that the last sentence from the definition of Clear Astern and Clear Ahead; Overlap changes things from our normal thinking when the boats are more than 90 degrees off the wind which the boats are.

Dennis ... i agree with Mike here ...   in how you are looking at it. 

Inside/Outside refers to the relative positions of 2 boats to a mark/obstruction, and NOT which boat is inside/outside the zone.  This is clear in the Casebook (see Case 12 for instance), but also clear when you simply read RRS 18 and RRS 19 together.  RRS 19 has nothing to do with a zone ... but uses the terms inside/outside with a meaning consistent with RRS 18 as i described.


"I would yell back, "No rights, Starboard, no overlap."
Here, I do not see how you are trying to use their relative angles to show there is no overlap.  On the contrary, with 2 boats meeting each other at the mark ... the relative approach angles you use in your description would be stronger evidence FOR OVERLAP .. not against overlap.

Yellow has to be careful here. If there is a clear overlap (and clearly there is) and she yells "no overlap", she risks a RRS 2 violation (or even RRS 69), unless she can convince the PC that she either didn't understand the rules or that it was a close-call (see Case 47)

To add to Angelo's comment, I would ask:
if the boats are not overlapped, which boat is clear astern of the other?

The italicized words above reference the definition of overlap (abbreviated here):

One upon a time, Dennis, when we were all sailing symmetric spinnakers we were generally sailing similar courses towards a leeward mark so 'overlap' was fairly intuitive for most people to understand. Assymmytric kites changed all of that!

So, as the angles got bigger it started to get confusing or unclear for many. The wider the angles the more likely there is overlap. In fact, at 90+ degrees there IS ALWAYS overlap based on the definition and simply geometry!

Perhaps check out #3 at https://sailzing.com/rule-18-2-giving-mark-room-racing-rules-of-sailing-2021-2024/

Hear, hear! The Rules work well in downwind starboard rounding sutiations like this so long as both parties understand both rule 18 and 'overlap'.