Race Marks

I need some advice about race marks.

I'm setting courses in a tdal  river where the springs can run at 3kts. River is 60ft deep in places at high springs.

Despite 3 times the depth of line from anchor to mark often my marks sink. When I have more line often the boats get caught on it.

I have Dan Buoys with 6ft telescopic flag poles on top.

They sink because of the drag.

Does anyone know of a better mark, or have any good ideas for how I can do it better?

Thanks,

we do not have space to store big marks so some sort of Dan buoy will have to do. Over the winter I'll get bigger ones and add chain below the mark.

Thanks for the useful reply.

We've converted our gear to chain, all the way down, and even that can drift on spring tides if the anchor doesn't hold, we've measured the depths of the outer and inner marks and increased the length appropriately but if the team laying the buoys selects the wrong colour bucket, we'll get a drifting mark. So important to have enough line.

We use small cylindrical yellow uprights on inshore and downwind but large fluro at out to sea & weather marks, we also have used those triangle shaped buoys that do seem to have good visibility but somehow they got shipped to Weymouth and we've not seen them since.

Originally posted by Riv It would be good to have a team to lay marks, however it's just me and someone to drive the boat,so It's got to be light and easy to handle, how do you manage all that chain?

That's all we have, two man team individual buckets one set of tackle per bucket, they are a bit heavy, but lifted into the rescue boat one at a time.

I've got money to buy new marks now, so the Lomo ones look good value. How much weight are you putting under them to keep them upright?