Leaving the Board

While other rules seem quite realistic, Leaving the Board is not.  As it stands, once part of a ship is over the edge, then the ship is removed and misses the next turn.  After that it is placed on again at the leaving spot during the  weather check, at light sails.   The immediate question is, is it placed from the back of its wake perpendicularly to the edge or, and that back edge is rounded, can it be placed at any angle facing inward?

The bigger question is the huge advantage it can give the leaving ship: from being pursued, say, struggling against the wind, to coming on again in only one turn with the wind to its back.  If you are a pursuing ship, you do not want to get too near the edge, as the pursued ship which left will suddenly appear out of a smoke/fog after a miraculous half turn and pound you with a point blank rake, as you had to keep moving during that turn off. Unless of course, you decide to go off too.  In short, it is unrealistic in the extreme and encourages players to seek out the edges 1. to escape a difficult situation and 2. to come back in a favourable situation.

We’ve tried several ways around this.  1. The leaving ship stays off for at least 2 but preferably 3 turns, to represent turning around somewhere in smoke/fog whatever off board.  2. To avoid further advantage, a ship must re-enter perpendicularly with the edge (which brings problems of it being on a line of wind direction, eg, is it just facing into the wind or just out of the wind?  In play you can make intentions clear, but as this is imposed, it could be either). 3. We’ve rolled dice and moved the re-entry point that many inches, which makes it harder to anticipate a re-entry point, again in keeping with the ship disappearing smoke/fog whatever, happening off table.

These ships move quite quickly, many @ 15″ a turn, so while that encourages quick combat, it also brings board edges prominently into play.  The rules here seem an anomaly that detract from an otherwise excellent game.  Any advice?