While many marks are placed or found at specified lat/lon locations, we cannot ignore the dropped marks. Two flavors of dropped marks are supported:
- w-L Drop: Weather/Leeward dropped mark. These are specified as nautical miles up or downwind from the start., and nautical miles offset to left or right. A typical choice is 1.25 nm for the weather mark, which may have an offset as well, and 0.25 nm for a leeward gate, placing it .25 nm to weather of the Start. Positive values are upwind and right, negative are downwind and left. ALL are relative to the location of the start.
- Offset: These are set relative to the prior mark. For these, we specify how far in nm the mark is offset perpendicular to the course direction to the prior mark, and nm up or down in a direction parallel to the course. A typical value might be 0.1 nm cross-course. The direction is determined by the rounding direction of the prior mark. So, the offset will be set to port of a port rounding mark.
These types are part of the definition of each mark.
